


Destiny That Darkly Hides Us

by Nympha_Alba



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: AU: Edwardian/World War I, Angst, Community: paperlegends, M/M, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:46:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nympha_Alba/pseuds/Nympha_Alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1913, the practice of homosexuality is unlawful, so is the practice of magic. When Arthur Pendragon and Merlin Emrys meet as Cambridge undergrads, they're both hungry for a real and true connection without secrets. For a short time they believe they may have found it. But war breaks out and separates them, and it seems unlikely that they will meet again. After all, what are the odds?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. River-God of the Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: War, angst, major character death (temporary/reincarnation)
> 
> Don't miss Tindu's beautiful art for this story, [here](http://tindu.livejournal.com/14613.html)!
> 
> So much love to so many people!  
> To my betas, **sabriel75** , **marguerite_26** and **nu_breed** , who were incredibly lovely and supportive throughout the process. They listened and brainstormed, read and re-read, and helped me make this a better story. I don't know what I would have done without them! To **prplhez8** and **scribblemoose** , who cheered me on when I was down, and to everyone in the PL write chats and on my PL filter - without your encouragement I’d never have finished! Also to **cassie_black** , who britpicked the story at very short notice, and last but not least, to my artist, **Tindu**.

_That's what Destiny is: to be face to face  
and nothing but that and always opposite._

 

PART ONE - RIVER-GOD OF THE BLOOD

_To sing the beloved is one thing, another, oh,  
that hidden guilty river-god of the blood._

 

She is so beautiful.

Reluctant to leave, Arthur stops by the door and turns to look at her again, following her graceful lines with his eyes. It's been a perfect day with crystal-clear skies and the air crisp and sweet like an apple. His head aches a little, his face is probably still streaked with oil and his eyes feel gritty despite the goggles. He pulls off his neckerchief and rubs it over his face.

Outside the hangar he stops to look up at the sky. It's still perfect for flying, golden and glowing with the late afternoon sun. He raises his hand in salute as Jack, one of the mechanics, shouts a good-bye as he leaves the aerodrome on his bicycle.

"Arthur!" Freddie calls across the fence. "Need a ride into town?"

The motorcar rattles and groans, making conversation impossible on the way back to Cambridge. Arthur is grateful. He winds his muffler tightly around his neck and leans back to dream about his darling Dragonfly.

She is a Morane-Saulnier Type H, an elegant monoplane built in France last year, 1912. Tricky to fly and even trickier to land, she challenges him constantly and he loves her fiercely. He loves everything about flying, everything from the tedious repairs and splicing of wires to the curious lurch of his stomach when the aeroplane leaves the ground; he loves the sputtering roar of the engine and the stench of burning oil, the wind whipping his face and the feel of the controls through his thick leather gloves.

But if flying is a dream, returning to Cambridge and university is returning to reality. Freddie drops him off at the cast-iron gates and Arthur heaves a sigh as he passes through them into the sleepy Sunday stillness.

***

While Lancelot reads grace before dinner in hall that evening, Arthur's tired eyes roam the room. They sweep over blond heads and dark, over black and white attire, pristine linen tablecloths and polished silver, candelabra and glittering glass. Something catches his interest: a face. It's only one of the other undergrads, he assumes, a fresher perhaps, but there's something arresting about him.

Arthur leans back and lets his gaze linger on the pale profile, light against the dark oak panelling. A shadow beneath the cheekbone and the long black lashes give the face a foreign, ascetic look, and Arthur wonders if the boy's eyes will be black, too, when he lifts them; almond-shaped and dolorous like those of a Byzantine saint. The dark head is bent as if in prayer until Arthur notices the boy's fingers breaking open a bread roll. He suppresses a snort. A _hungry_ Byzantine saint.

 _Tibi debetum obsequium praestare valeamus per Christum Dominum nostrum,_ Lancelot reads, and Arthur murmurs his _Amen_ inside a smile.

After a day of flying he is usually alight with exhilaration, with the feel of the skies and the vibrations of the machine still there in his body like a physical memory, his ears still filled with noise. But tonight the pale boy steals his attention.

Towards the end of the meal Arthur glances over again, the same moment that the boy lifts his head. His eyes are as dark as Arthur imagined but not at all tragic. They're glittering under the black mop of hair as if he knows a secret, one he's bursting to tell.

***

The second time Arthur sees the boy is after cricket practice on a sunny day. He’s walking back from the field with Leon, chatting about nothing, their bats swinging carelessly from their hands. They're warm in their cricket whites and the world is glorious in dappled green and gold. The boy is leaning against a wall with his dark hair and pale skin set off by the sandstone. One knee is bent and the sole of his shoe rests against the wall. His unbuttoned jacket is pushed back and his hands are shoved in his trouser pockets; an unlit cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth. His gaze follows them as they pass, and there's a look in his eyes that Arthur can't read. It makes a small shiver run down his spine like a drop of water, cold in the bright sun.

"Who's that?" he asks Leon when they're out of earshot.

"Who, the dark, brooding chap?" Leon shrugs and swats at some tall grass with his bat. "Name's Emrys. He has the rooms below Lancelot's."

Arthur tucks away this piece of information while he processes the image of the boy's – Emrys' – wrists and hands, magnified. Sharp, delicate bone. Cuffs beginning to fray. Long slender fingers.

 _A scholarship student_ , Arthur thinks. _No one else would wear their cuffs until they're frayed._ It makes him smile, and to stop Leon from noticing the smile he starts a fight. He turns and jogs backwards, grins a challenge into Leon's face and dances around him before taking an exaggerated swing with his bat and hitting Leon's backside. And then there's nothing for it but to run.

***

The first time Merlin sees Arthur, he doesn't see Arthur at all. What he sees is fire; hazy, red-gold flames around a shadow-like figure, and for a moment the world stops and falls silent.

Then time loosens its grip, the world is back in motion, and Merlin knows - knows with a certainty he can’t explain - that the flames will one day burn through the haze to dance around Arthur bright and clean and pure. Merlin wants to be there when that day arrives. When Arthur emerges.

***

Cambridge is emerald grass and buildings of gold, stone worked into patterns of lace. Turrets and spires dream against the blue sky and tremble upside down in the water. Merlin half expects the beauty of the surroundings to overshadow the faces of people but finds that the opposite is true. The living are printed in relief over the dead; the dead providing a backdrop but never leaving, the honest palimpsest of a true place of learning. Merlin has a thirst for knowledge, a hunger to find out.

Every moment here is saturated with curiosity and gratitude.

The sandstone feels powdery under his hands. It's layered into tactile topographic maps, speaking of the land from which it was taken. Merlin runs his fingers over it and listens.

***

Merlin was three years old when he understood that he was different, that not everyone could do the things that were as natural to him as breathing. It simply hadn't occurred to him that not everyone could still the wind, create sparks or move objects by thinking them to a new place.

Hunith had reached across the table for the salt shaker and Merlin had absent-mindedly passed it to her without using his hands (he was busy trying to think what he would use for the sail and keel on his bark-boat). When the shaker landed snugly in Hunith's palm she frowned and _looked_ at it as though she'd never seen it before, as if it hadn't sat there on the kitchen table since before Merlin was born. As if it prompted her to make a decision.

"Merlin, dear," she said, taking a deep breath. "That thing you just did... "

And then she had pulled him on to her lap, hugged him to her and held him tightly, with his head against her breast so he could hear her heartbeat. Very gently she had explained to him that some things needed to be hidden, not because they were shameful but because they could be misunderstood.

The world had changed colour that night. Hunith had only wanted to protect him, but Merlin had always felt that his sense of loneliness stemmed from that moment.

***

Merlin never put his magic to much use. He sensed that it was a thing that could be honed and trained and fine-tuned, and he did practise now and then, but with no one to guide him it was difficult and a bit pointless.

He had never met anyone who had magic, at least not to his knowledge. He felt faintly sorry for all those who would never feel magic rush through them like warm, liquid gold, to tingle in their fingers and burn in their eyes.

He wondered what it was for, why he had been gifted with magic if there was no purpose to it. Most of the things he used it for were everyday, domestic, small; protecting Hunith's washing on the line from the rain, healing scrapes and cuts, lighting the fire in the grate when they were out of matches.

When he was ten, he learned that the practice of magic was unlawful.

In his early teens the magic faded into the background, stopped flaring up spontaneously like it had when he was a child. There were so many other things to try to understand, so much to feel and worry and fret about. When his eyes strayed and his fantasies began to revolve around other boys, long lean muscle and flat chests, Merlin came to believe he was truly cursed. There should only be so many things in a person's life that needed hiding.

***

Arthur has slipped back into university life so easily he has barely noticed. This is his second year, and lectures, cricket, Sundays at the airfield – it's all familiar ground. But this year there's the dark-eyed boy drawing his attention.

Arthur hasn't taken dinner in hall this frequently since his first weeks at university, but these days he's compelled to go. He wants to see that face in the soft light from the chandeliers. Emrys is aware of Arthur's presence, too, he can tell. A night when Emrys acknowledges it, when he lifts his head and meets Arthur's eyes, is a night when Arthur returns to his rooms with his heart a-flutter.

They have yet to exchange a single word and Arthur knows nothing at all about Emrys. As the days turn chillier and darker around them, Arthur's questions accumulate in his mind. He has nowhere to go to ask them.

***

Even if Arthur’s been known to skip the occasional lecture, he never misses chapel. Seated in his pew he leans back and lets the choral music wash over him, listens to the clear voices swelling under the vaulted ceiling, floating above the gleaming black and white floor. He mumbles his prayers without thinking of the meaning, soothed and comforted by the ritual. His gaze wanders over the gilded cherubs and angels under the ceiling beams, their unseeing eyes wide open and glinting in the candlelight.

He's spent the day poring over heavy legal tomes and when he closes his eyes the small print still dances under his eyelids. Law bores him, but it was the only subject acceptable to his father. Medicine would possibly have done, Arthur thinks, if he'd promised to seek an academic career rather than becoming a hospital slave, but it never came up for discussion. If Arthur had been given a choice, he'd have gone for art history.

He looks around now for Emrys, the Byzantine saint, the El Greco, but he isn't there. When Arthur thinks about it, he can't recall ever seeing Emrys in chapel. Catholic? Atheist? Agnostic?

There's something about Emrys that won't leave Arthur alone; something that keeps niggling and fretting at the edges of his mind. He can't stop thinking about the ascetic face, the bony wrists and long hands, and he feels guilty thinking about it now, in chapel. He visits Lancelot's rooms nearly every day to try to bring about a carefully accidental meeting, but so far he's had no luck. He wants to pour out all his questions to Lancelot but doesn't know how to justify his interest, or mask it.

He wants to know if Emrys really is a scholarship student. At Eton, Arthur found he preferred the company of the scholarship boys, like Percy, to anyone except his oldest, closest friends. They were usually intelligent, humble, motivated, with none of the nonchalance or the tendencies to treat other students like dirt that he could see in people like Kay and Valiant – destructive forces who believed it their birthright to have and do anything at the expense of others. Arthur had quickly learnt to stay away from them and keep to those with a natural, innate kindness, an intuitive sense of justice – like Leon. Like Lancelot. Like Gwaine.

The only thing Arthur really knows about Emrys apart from the location of his rooms is that he and Lancelot attend the same translation class.

***

Merlin gasps awake in the darkness of his room, surfacing out of a chaotic dream of blazing metal and crashing noise. It's not night and not morning but that hour that hangs between them in a gossamer thread, a strange borderland where anything can happen.

Not asleep but not yet fully awake, Merlin nearly falls out of bed. Something is pulling at him, something that was in his dream... He lights the lamps and whips the covering sheet off the half-finished canvas on the easel. Shivering, he tries to light the fire but his hands are trembling, so he lights it by magic. _It's an exception,_ he thinks.

When the kettle whistles on the gas ring he makes himself tea, and goes over to the table to mix paints. And then it's time to open the floodgates between his mind and his hand, between the dream and the canvas.

His recurring dreams are real and vivid but utterly confusing. They started in his early teens, and that's when he began to paint - to try to make sense of the fragmented, disjointed images that filled his nights. It's not the kind of dreams that are forgotten as soon as consciousness returns. They stay with him during the day, equally elusive and insistent. He doesn't know what they signify, only that they surface from deep inside him. They often frighten him.

The predominant colour of all his paintings is red, and while that is true for this one as well, this is shot through with glinting metal. Sometimes the red colour is a bright, vivid scarlet, sometimes dusty and faded like frequently washed linen. Sometimes it has the dark intensity of blood, and then he can feel the taste of it on his tongue, the tang of iron and the grit of earth. The dusty red doesn't taste of anything. It's tactile, he can feel it under his fingers, and that's why he associates it with linen. It _feels_ like linen, both warm and cool, a thin shirt with nothing between its weave and the skin beneath it.

Sometimes the red colour is the hot glow of fire, and Merlin fears those dreams. They curl and roar, beat their enormous wings against the sky and block out the sun.

Merlin paints his way into morning, adding fragmented forms on the canvas in a rush, and he is safe again, for now.

***

Mr Gaius, the literature professor, has sharp blue eyes and a no-nonsense manner softened by an underlying kindness. His genuine love for the subject he teaches shines through his sometimes dry lectures, and for the first time in his life Merlin feels he is right where he belongs. His head buzzes with inspired lines as he carries stacks of books back to his rooms.

If he paints his dreams, books provide him with other images, the kind that can be analysed and discussed. Paintings are intuitive, instinctive, felt rather than thought: blossoms on the branches of emotion. The beauty of language can be intricate or wonderfully simple. On occasion it touches him without passing through filters of perception or analysis, but colours and images are direct links to his emotional core, to his _being_.

On his current reading list are Shelley and Keats, and Merlin immerses himself in poetry. He has read _Adonais_ before but it never hit home like it does today.

 _Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,_  
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,  
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

Merlin reads the passage twice, slowly, before pushing the book away. He rubs his eyes and leans back in the chair until it's balancing precariously on two legs, and tilts his head back. A bright reflection of something outside - a mirror, a watch, a bicycle handle - is dancing on the ceiling above him, a bright quivering shape. Suddenly Shelley's words connect with the reflection and with something in Merlin's own soul, something about fragments and mirrors, about the glass dome destroyed and rebuilt...

The chair crashes back down as he pulls the book closer to read the lines again. No, Shelley doesn't say anything about the dome being rebuilt. Then he's got it wrong, Merlin thinks. Shelley has missed something fundamental, because Death may trample the many-coloured dome to fragments but it's not the end. The dome will be rebuilt, it will rise over and over and dot the white radiance of Eternity not just once but many times, like gems spread on the satin of a jeweller's case. Merlin's fingers close around the edge of the table. He _knows_ this, he _knows_ that Shelley is wrong.

He feels ill, feverish. He is clammy and shivery, his hands are shaking and there is an odd sensation behind his eyes. His magic is alive in his veins; it shimmers in his mind and slowly twines itself around the tendons and bones of his arms and fingers calling for attention, reminding him of its existence.

Merlin closes his eyes, his fingertips inching forward until they rest on the volume of poetry.

***

Arthur is at dinner in hall again that night, all blond hair and black gown and aristocratic nose, and Merlin quickly looks away. Whenever Arthur is there Merlin keeps his eyes trained on his plate, his hands, his glass, or they will stray. There are times when he can't stop them, and he is frightened by his own reaction when he meets Arthur's gaze. Afraid his eyes will say too much.

And he is right to be frightened, he thinks, because he is well aware who Arthur's father is: Uther Pendragon, an influential politician who advocates corrective facilities for people like Merlin, who hates everything that Merlin is. His magic, his love, his desires - in Uther Pendragon's eyes, these are abominations deserving the severest punishment.

Arthur's presence in the room is like a physical touch stroking gooseflesh along Merlin's arms. When he looks up to find Arthur's gaze on him, they exchange a small smile - an involuntary smile that can't be contained. Heat rises to Merlin's face and he looks down in confusion, hoping the lights are low enough for Arthur not to see his blush. Arthur doesn't have Merlin's shyness. If something is to come from this, Merlin thinks, it will have to come from Arthur.

***

Some weeks into the term, Professor Gaius asks Merlin to Sunday tea. Flattered to be asked, Merlin puts on a new stiff collar and new cuffs and goes. It's a bright October day with trees like torches and a sky clear as glass.

The Professor pours the tea and offers Merlin warm buttered scones and strawberry jam, and when they're halfway through the first cup of tea, he abruptly steers the conversation to the subject of magic. Merlin jumps and drops his scone on the rug with the buttered side down, apologises profusely and then makes things worse by fumbling the scone so there are two more grease stains beside the first. Professor Gaius looks at him as if he can see his soul and waves his apologies aside.

"No matter, Emrys," he says. "And in any case I suspect you know how to clean that rug without soap and brush. You _do_ have magic, don't you?"

The shock of the question washes through Merlin like scalding water. Back in Ealdor, when he was a boy, he used to sit by Hunith's rabbit cages holding his favourite, an irregularly patterned, black-and-white creature, stroking its ears and feeling its heart thrum in the tiny body. A fluttering little rabbit heart, that's what's inside Merlin's chest this moment.

Because how could Professor Gaius tell, how could he have guessed? Does it _show_? Has Merlin been careless? He'd have thought all these years of practice, all these years of carefully repressing his magic would be second nature to him by now.

"I'm sorry if I startled you, Emrys," the Professor adds with great gentleness. "I'm sure I can be a rather alarming old man at times, but there is no need for concern."

Merlin looks down at his hands and swallows his heartbeat, his face hot as he watches the toe of his boot nudge the edge of the darkening butter stain.

"Yes, sir," he admits in a half-whisper, directing his words at the floor. "I have magic."

The clock on the mantelpiece dispatches three seconds into eternity before Professor Gaius speaks again.

"I am only asking," he says, "because I would like to offer my guidance. I believe there is a reason for everything, and it is not always the apparent one, the one that is visible on the surface, but a deeper reason. And I believe one of the reasons you came to Cambridge, Merlin Emrys, was to have your magic strengthened and honed."

The initial shock is fading but reaction is making Merlin's hands tremble. The teacup he is holding is made of the finest, thinnest china, so delicate it's almost translucent, and he is suddenly afraid he'll break it, by wild magic or just by clenching it too hard. So he leans over and returns it to its saucer on the table, feeling the Professor's eyes on him with the strangest sense that he is being tested.

"Have you had anyone to guide you in these matters before?" Professor Gaius asks.

"It's illegal, Professor," Merlin manages. "Practicing magic is illegal."

Professor Gaius is watching him intently. "Yes," he agrees amiably, "it is, and it is possible that this conversation alone could send both you and me to court. But a law is not necessarily right because it has been made a law, and with a bit of luck and a great deal of hard work, it can sometimes even be reversed."

Merlin shudders in the sunlit room. He can't see where this is going, doesn't understand what the Professor wants from him.

"So no one ever taught you spells," Professor Gaius continues to prod, "or how to focus or contain your magic…?"

Merlin blinks stupidly, not comprehending, and shakes his head. Spells? His magic is intuitive, always has been, and it seems to work quite well without him ever _saying_ anything or thinking anything articulate. Is this not how it works for other people with magic?

"I never use spells," he replies unsurely, inexplicably feeling a little guilty, like he has done something wrong and ought to apologise. "Is it necessary? I mean – should I learn spells...? Will they enhance my magic? Amplify it?"

Unexpectedly, it's the Professor's turn to drop his scone. He catches it with astonishing speed and deftness, but a dollop of strawberry jam slides down the buttered surface and lands on the rug next to Merlin's greasy mess.

"You don't use spells," Professor Gaius says after a minute. It's a statement and it comes out flatly, the words falling between them to lie there like the jam on the rug. "Have you never learnt any? Not a single one?"

Merlin can only shake his head, fixing Professor Gaius with his eyes, feeling ignorant and inadequate, unsure what the Professor's astonishment means. Is Merlin not - not _normal_ , if the concept of normality can be used in connection with magic?

"Would you mind," Professor Gaius asks slowly and deliberately, "would you mind showing me some of what you can do?"

His voice is tense and Merlin hesitates, still not sure what Professor Gaius is after. Does he want proof of Merlin's magic so he can - do what, call the police?

The Professor seems to understand. "There is no need to be afraid, Emrys," he repeats. "And if you don't want to show me, you don't have to. It's entirely your own choice."

It's stupid, perhaps, stupid and careless, but Merlin _trusts_ Professor Gaius. He is suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to show his magic, to openly demonstrate this fundamental part of him that's had to stay hidden all his life. It would be a relief, he thinks, it would be liberating to do magic in front of someone - an authority figure. To say _this is who I am_ and not be ashamed or afraid.

"Maybe I'll..." Merlin says with his rabbit-heart racing in his chest, "maybe I should... Your rug needs cleaning, sir."

At the Professor's smile and nod, Merlin straightens his back, stretches out a hand with the fingertips pointing to the stains on the rug. No, he doesn't need spells. He only needs to feel the weave of the rug, the tight criss-cross pattern of threads and the greasy and sugary matter sticking and clinging to them. As soon as he feels it, he can remove it.

When he looks up at Professor Gaius again, the rug is clean.

Professor Gaius says nothing, and a frisson of nerves shudders through Merlin's body. He doesn't know what to think. It feels like he's being tested and he has no idea how he's doing.

"It's visual," he explains quietly. "I _see_ it, what I want done. And I _feel_ it. It never occurred to me that I would need spells to do what I do."

He turns to the cold, blackened fireplace, stares at it and imagines a fire in it. Immediately the flames spring to life, leaping up to begin a merry dance without being fed by coal or wood.

Professor Gaius stays silent. After an eternity that is probably no more than two minutes he clears his throat.

"These are small things, Emrys," he says. "Domestic ones. Have you ever tried your hand, or rather your skills, at anything more... extensive?"

"Well," Merlin hesitates. "I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I can change the weather?"

Professor Gaius makes a strange noise then, a kind of half-choked clucking sound, like a turkey, Merlin thinks.

"Well, yes," he says in a very odd tone of voice, "I think that must be considered extensive, I think it definitely must."

Then he laughs and shakes his head, and Merlin eyes him anxiously.

"I redirected a stream once," he says, getting even more nervous when Professor Gaius guffaws. "So... I think I could probably do larger things? But I never really _tried_. I didn't feel there was much point. It's... I don't know, but it's like there's something _missing_ every time I do magic. Like there’s something I'd need to stabilise the magic, reinforce it. I’m sorry, sir, I'm not explaining this very well. Do you think it could be the lack of spells? Would spells enhance things?"

"No," says Professor Gaius slowly and firmly, "no, Merlin, I don't believe they would." Merlin notices the switch to his first name and he rather likes it. "Other people use spells as a means of focusing their magic," the Professor continues, "but you seem to do that excellently without the spells. As for what you said about something missing, it might well be true that you need something else to push your magic along. A situation, perhaps; an emotion, an experience that you need before you can proceed to more extensive things."

"How will I know what it is?"

Professor Gaius looks at him. "Whatever it is," he says, "you will recognise it when it happens."

***

Under Professor Gaius' firm but gentle hand, Merlin's magic opens like a flower to the sun. His power is called forth and rivers begin to flow – that’s how it feels. Deep wells are wakened from their sleep. Magic is a great gift, Professor Gaius tells him over and over, one he should not waste. "And you _are_ gifted, Merlin; tremendously so. There is no doubt about that."

Perhaps the Professor is right, perhaps Merlin really will be able to do good things, great things, one day. Acknowledged and encouraged at last, his magic blossoms, filled with possibility, and there are times when he feels like nothing but harnessed potential. In daytime he practises, and when he sleeps he can still feel his magic at work, perpetually in motion.

Merlin's hot, red, fragmented dreams recede and make way for dreams that are calm and clear, flooded with light. In these dreams he can do anything. In these dreams he turns his palms up and they hold a dewdrop, a butterfly, the sea, the world.

"Do _you_ have magic, Professor?" Merlin eventually ventures to ask.

Professor Gaius is arranging things on his desk. His back is turned and his shoulders seem more than usually stooped as he carefully aligns a sheaf of paper with the edge of the desk and shakes his head. "Sadly not," he replies. "I only have the gift of sensing it in others."

Something moves and clenches in Merlin's chest, a strange hybrid of hope and dread.

"Others?" he breathes, and when Professor Gaius doesn't answer, he adds: "Are there others, here at Cambridge...?"

Professor Gaius turns then and looks straight at him. Everything is in perfect order on the desk. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that," he says sternly, but there's the beginning of a smile in his eyes.

The tension in Merlin’s shoulders melts away as he smiles back. "Thank you," he says.

When Merlin re-enters the court much later, the night air feels clearer and sharper than before. He stops and looks at the deep blue night sky, at the ink-black roofs and spires silhouetted against it. _You are not alone_ , the buildings seem to tell him. _Magic lives in this town, in this place._

A couple of undergrads come stumbling out of someone's rooms, laughing as they shuffle and shove their way down the colonnade. Merlin ignores them and lingers another moment, breathing deeply and smiling up at the stars.

***

Whoever designed the library furniture was clever - the benches are hard and too low, uncomfortable enough not to invite sleep. Merlin sighs and changes position, abandoning his copy of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ in favour of the newspaper. Chin in hand, absent-mindedly running his fingers through his hair and thinking he needs to visit the barber, he browses the first pages without much interest until his eyes come to rest on a headline on page four.

YOUTH CHARGED WITH PUBLIC USE OF MAGIC

Merlin flattens the paper with one hand and reads about the young man who, it appears, stopped a falling roof tile mid-air and in all likelihood saved a child's life. The report contains a tearful interview with the mother and a comment from Uther Pendragon, Member of Parliament, in whose view the young man's act of courage provides no ground for dropped charges or even a conditional or mild sentence. The practice of magic is prohibited by law for good reason, the MP tells the reporter, and anyone with magical abilities must be regarded as armed and dangerous. No leniency can be allowed where magic is concerned, under any circumstances. Despite the noble and laudable intent of the current case, the perpetrator will face imprisonment.

Merlin's lungs feel depleted of oxygen. He glances up at the marble bust of Sir Francis Bacon: generosity and enlightenment. Uther Pendragon is obviously not an admirer.

Light is streaming in through the high windows, filling the room like a sharp contrast to Uther Pendragon's medieval darkness. _Armed and dangerous. No leniency can be allowed._ This is what Arthur grew up with; this is what Arthur will have heard as truth all through his childhood.

The article hammers it home in a new way. Merlin's blood pounds in his temples. Suffocating in the library atmosphere, he snatches up his Lord Byron from the table and runs outside where he stops for a minute to take huge gulps of sweet air. Across the court he sees Arthur hurrying along the gravel path, gown flying, late for something. Merlin's heart constricts. There are so many obstacles, so many unknowns, and yet... and yet...

Arthur disappears under the arches without noticing him, and Merlin walks back to his rooms with heavy steps.

***

Damn Morgana and her taste for champagne cocktails in the afternoon! Whenever Arthur agrees to meet his half-sister, this is how it ends. He swears softly to himself and laughs as he walks back to college, a little unsteady on his feet. His temples are throbbing and he decides to go and bother Lancelot, who is well-organised and kind and will provide coffee.

Not that Arthur would ever tell Morgana this, but he's happy to have her in Cambridge. If she hadn't had money of her own, he doubts that Uther would have allowed her to attend university, but now she's happily settled at Newnham and free to get Arthur drunk in the middle of the afternoon.

He grins and heads for the stairs.

Lancelot takes one look at Arthur and reaches for the coffee tin. "Morgana?" he asks sympathetically.

As Arthur runs back down the stairs an hour later he feels much better, taking two steps at a time in flying leaps and humming to himself. When he rounds the corner he collides headlong with someone, so violently that he sees stars. Books lie scattered over the paving as he blinks the world back into focus, and there's Emrys rubbing at his forehead and looking disoriented.

"Ow," he says, and sounds like an affronted child.

It makes Arthur want to laugh but instead he apologises, takes Emrys by the elbow and scrutinises his face with genuine concern. "Are you hurt? I'm sorry, truly I am."

"Oh, that's all right," Emrys mutters and crouches down to collect his books.

Arthur follows, glancing at the bent, dark head while he picks up volumes of John Donne and Alexander Pope and dusts them off. The tips of Emrys' ears are red and something clutches at Arthur's heart, something too deep to be felt for someone he doesn't know at all, but nothing about Emrys is ordinary. They reach for the last book at the same time, stopping with their fingertips touching opposite edges. It's Sir Thomas Malory's _Le Morte d'Arthur_.

"Ominous," Arthur says and grins, and their eyes meet.

Arthur stills and draws a breath. Close up like this, Emrys' eyes are intensely blue, shy and direct, secretive and wide open. The rosy afternoon light casts shadows beneath his cheekbones, his bottom lip, the apple of his throat, and makes him so tactile, so touchable, but with the distant beauty of a Botticelli angel. Not for the first time, Arthur wishes he could paint. He envisions Emrys sitting for him, turning his profile, opening his shirt to let light play over a pale shoulder and leave a pool of shadow in the hollow above the collarbone.

He hears his own breathing and flushes with shame. Emrys' gaze slides down to Arthur's neck, then to the book, and he snatches it up and holds it protectively to his chest.

They stand up and look at one another; Arthur's fingers glide over the smooth, soft leather cover of Keats' poetry. If he hands it over they're all done and he'll have to leave.

"Sorry," he says again with his heart in his throat. "I have no manners today. I'm Arthur Pendragon."

Emrys smiles a little then. He has a pretty mouth. "Merlin Emrys. Come in for coffee."

***

Some things leave an afterglow, some things resonate inside the mind long after they've happened.

Merlin looks at Arthur over _Le Morte d'Arthur_ and refuses to consider the implications.

Whatever else Arthur is, he is also the most beautiful thing Merlin has ever seen, all gold and red and blue, crested with fire. His eyes are laughing; the sun touches his face. He smells like hot metal. Merlin wants to lean forward, touch his lips to Arthur's throat and feel them burn.

***

"Merlin?" Arthur says as he steps over the threshold. "Is that your real name?"

"Well, it's Myrddin really, but no one ever calls me that."

Emrys' rooms are more spartan than any Arthur has visited in Cambridge and he can't stop his eyes wandering. The floor is bare aside from two small rugs that look hand-crocheted and lumpy; Arthur thinks of the luxurious Savonnerie carpet in his own rooms and winces a little. There are books everywhere, in rows and stacks and towers on the floor and the desk as well as in the simple bookcase. Over in the corner is an easel and a small table covered with brushes, stained cloths and tubes of paint.

Arthur walks up to one of the large canvases on the wall and touches a finger to the corner.

"Did you paint these?"

There are five in all, all of them featuring intense, saturated colours and shattered forms, reality broken up and put back together into a landscape of dreams – or nightmares. Disturbed and impressed, Arthur steps back and looks at Emrys, who shrugs and offers him a cigarette. He takes it and watches Emrys put one between his own lips, making Arthur close his eyes and try not to think of the way they look, try not to think of that mouth at all. Emrys lights Arthur's cigarette but not his own, and proceeds to make the coffee.

A book lies open on the desk with a pencil resting in the fold, and Arthur walks over to it to stop himself staring at the graceful lines of Emrys' neck, the shape of his head.

_... but I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!_

_Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,_   
_Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men_   
_Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart_   
_Dare the unpastured dragon in its den?_

What is he reading? Arthur flicks some pages to see the title.

"It's _Adonais_ ," Emrys says over by the gas ring. "Shelley's lament for Keats."

_Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;_   
_And in my heartless breast and burning brain_   
_That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,_

Arthur takes a step back, his cheeks hot. He must be a little drunk still.

"Given slightly to exaggeration, these chaps, aren't they?" he says weakly.

Emrys hands him a cup and eyes him thoughtfully. "Do you think so? If someone dies, someone you really, deeply love...?"

That word from Emrys' mouth makes Arthur clumsy. He burns his fingers, then his tongue, and discovers that Emrys' face is transformed when he smiles. His eyes sparkle and crinkle up until they nearly disappear, and there's a dimple in each cheek.

"Have a biscuit," he says. "I just had a parcel from home."

Arthur is glad of the distraction. "Your mother makes you biscuits?"

Emrys only shrugs; his eyes are warm and soft.

The biscuits are the best Arthur has ever had – perhaps not the most refined ones, but they're good and honest, chewy with rolled oats and currants and crunchy with hazelnuts. He even closes his eyes for a moment in pure pleasure. When he looks up again Emrys' gaze is on him, intent.

"Good?" he asks in a low voice like the question isn't about biscuits at all. Arthur shivers, his face going hot as he nods.

Emrys hands him a second biscuit. "They're nothing compared to what you're used to, of course," he says with innocent eyes. "Nothing to the biscuits _you're_ being sent from home. I mean, no gold leaf, no diamond crusts... just plain old currants."

Arthur's hand stops halfway to his mouth. For a split second he frowns, then he throws his head back and laughs.

Emrys looks pleased with himself, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth to stop his grin. There's a tiny dimple just below the left corner of his mouth. Arthur wants to reach out and touch it.

"Tell your mother they're heavenly," he says.

The grin breaks through. "Made with butter and love."

Arthur has never once had a parcel from home. He used to envy the other boys at school who were sent chocolate and plover eggs and embarrassing warm underwear. The only post from Arthur's father arrived once a year – still does; a birthday note on embossed cotton vellum. Arthur knows the handwriting of Uther's secretary very well by now.

When the biscuit is gone he has no reason to stay in Emrys' rooms, so he casts around for an excuse to come back. In the end he asks to borrow the volume of Keats' poetry that he picked up from the floor. Emrys lends it to him on condition he returns it within a week.

Arthur steps into the court with the book tucked under his arm, his heart beating wildly at the realisation that Emrys, too, seemed to want an excuse.

***

When the door clicks shut behind Arthur, Merlin closes his eyes and slumps against the wall, sliding down until he sits on the floor. The air is burning his lungs. Something about Arthur electrifies Merlin's magic and makes it intensely alive. It heats up inside and around him until there is a shimmer in the air and a buzz in his veins; it weaves and twines its golden tendrils into his every thought and makes him tremble. Is it possible that Arthur has magic?

Merlin inhales through the nose and exhales again, slowly; bites his lip as he remembers Arthur's fingers brushing against his when he handed over the coffee cup. And most of all: Arthur standing in front of Merlin's paintings. He had looked at all five of them in turn, very intently with a small frown, tilting his head to one side and then to the other, as if to see whether they would change with the angle. Twice he had reached out to touch the paint on the canvas with a finger, and both times it had jolted Merlin, as if _he_ had been touched by that fingertip.

Arthur hadn't said anything about the paintings, only asked whether they were Merlin's work, and then he had just _stood_ there. What had he seen?

Merlin had been burning to ask but afraid to. He had watched Arthur surreptitiously while busying himself by the gas ring, wondering what went through Arthur's mind, and then watched Arthur out of the corner of his eye as he moved around the room.

And Arthur's instincts would have been right, Merlin thinks and leans his head against the wall as the buzz of magic dies down around him. The paintings are more than just paintings. His magic is involved in them.

Painting is intensely private to him, both the process and the results, but when he came to Cambridge he decided to hang some of his work on the walls. Visitors to his rooms have observed that he is more influenced by the Cubists than the Expressionists, but Merlin hasn’t actually seen much of either school. To understand what people are talking about he has looked at art books and visited galleries and exhibitions, and while he does like some of the paintings, they never strike a chord with him. The truth is he is not particularly interested in art in general - not in _other_ people's art.

Other artists seem to express themselves through their paintings. They want to tell a story, stir up emotion, make the viewer reflect. Art is a form of communication for them, but Merlin only needs an audience of one and this is why he never considered going to art school. He paints his dreams so that perhaps one day the kaleidoscopic visions will change into something intelligible, and he will _know_.

Merlin sits on the floor for a good half hour while his magic quiets to its normal low hum, and all the while his mind reverberates with the echo of Professor Gaius’ voice: _You will recognise it when it happens._

It's happening now.

***

Arthur grew up among boys. They were clever, dull or mediocre; physical, vocal, occasionally filthy. Some of them were pretty. Arthur was prudent enough to look away.

There were sports and changing rooms, dormitories and communal showers, and the occasional group wank where no one touched anyone but themselves. It was over quickly with some laughing and teasing, clothes were arranged and everyone walked away whistling, and Arthur was left wondering if he was cursed for wanting more.

He knew his father's views on the perversion that seemed to be rotting his mind, and thought himself condemned in every way. His unspeakable desires had to be hidden away in the deepest dungeons of his soul.

Arthur met girls, pretty girls, bright, and kissed a few of them but never took it further. He wasn't revolted. He wasn't excited. Nothing happened at all and he just didn't want it. Sometimes he looked at his friends and wondered what it would feel like to touch their skin, but they were his friends and it was not like that.

He had yet to fall in love even the slightest bit.

Cambridge didn't offer freedom, exactly, but a taste of it, a glimpse. He was not alone; of that he was sure. There had to be others here who shared his perversion. He read Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde and despaired. How could he ever touch other men without shame, without fear? In a fantasy world, in his art books...? His father was a highly visible public figure. How would it be possible for Arthur to live anything but a dishonest life?

But then there is Merlin Emrys, with his dark eyes and sharp bones and unexpected smile, and Arthur wants for this to be real. The world is rearranging itself.

***

Arthur waits two whole days before returning the book, and if his hand isn't quite steady when he knocks on Emrys' door, he prefers not to think about it.

Emrys smiles and takes the book, glancing up at Arthur through dark lashes. "Did you read it?"

Arthur is a miserable liar. "Um..."

Emrys laughs, all crinkles and dimples, and goes to make tea. Arthur holds himself together admirably through it all. He doesn’t even stare too much at the white skin at the back of Emrys' neck. To do even better, he walks around the room poking at things. At the desk he stops and grins.

"You really do read everything at once, don't you," he says and points to where Shelley lies side by side with Chaucer, George Eliot and William Blake.

Emrys shrugs. "I suppose."

"So what are you _really_ reading? What is your focus right now - I mean, what is it _supposed_ to be?" Arthur's grin is widening.

"Romanticism."

"English?"

"Yes," Emrys says, frowning, "but look, you can't read a novel or a poem as an isolated thing. You have to see it in relation to... to other literature, to music, art, history, contemporary politics..."

Arthur pokes at another stack of books. "So when you're asked to read English Romanticism, you don't stick to old Wordsworth and Coleridge or even stay within the political borders - you read Goethe, Victor Hugo, Madame de Staël, Chateaubriand and... what's this..." - he turns a book over - "Batyushkov...?"

"Among others, yes," Emrys replies coldly.

"Not an over-achiever _at all_ , are you?" Arthur is laughing out loud. "Professor Gaius must _love_ you. I bet you question every theory and start every sentence with 'yes, but...' "

"Oh, shut up."

"You're a scholarship student, aren't you?"

Emrys turns to look at him, straightening his back in challenge. "Yes. Why?"

Arthur makes a face at him. "I'm beginning to see why. Such... _ardour_... must be rewarded."

He regrets it as soon as it's out. Emrys' face is suddenly tense and pinched as he turns away.

"Don't be an arse," he mutters.

"Look, I'm sorry. I was just..."

"Yes, I'm a scholarship student." Emrys' voice is sharp. "I was a charity student at Sunnington before, a day boy with my tuition fee and meals paid. Not that you'll ever be able to understand, but it _means_ something to me to be here. You, you've always had everything. You take all this for granted. To you, it's just..."

"Don't tell me what I think," Arthur interrupts.

"So that's another of your exclusive privileges, then? _You_ can tell people what they think, but if they dare answer back...?"

Arthur takes a breath. This isn't worth arguing about. "As 'highly strung' as your romantic poets, Emrys?" he says, keeping his voice level. "I was only... What's the matter with you?"

They stare at each other. Emrys' eyes are hard and Arthur bites his tongue, realising that it isn't anger that makes his pulse race; it's fear. He can't afford to alienate Emrys now that they've _begun_ ; he has to keep Emrys in his life until... until he can _understand_.

"I'm sorry," Emrys says after a pause, but he looks angry, not repentant.

Arthur shakes his head, bites his lip. "No, I'm the one who should apologise. And you're wrong, by the way," he adds, trying a small smile. "It does mean something to me, being here, and I try not to take anything for granted."

Emrys' tense shoulders relax visibly. "I know I'm too sensitive about this sometimes," he offers in return. "You know, always the charity case. Ever grateful and indebted. Hand-me-downs and leftovers, crumbs from the rich man's table." But he does smile back.

"Hardly a charity case," Arthur says, thankful for his tactless comment that just taught him something important about Emrys. "Your brains and your... um, _ardour_ , definitely earned you your scholarship."

Emrys laughs and punches his arm, and Arthur breathes again, marvelling at the transformation of Emrys' eyes from dark to crystal blue in seconds. There are borders and boundaries to learn, he thinks, but at least Emrys seems willing to let him in.


	2. Threshold

_Threshold, what is it for two lovers  
that they wear away a little of their own older doorsill_

 

October comes to an end, crisp and clear, and darkness falls early. Arthur barely notices. More often than not he spends his evenings sprawling on the rug in front of the fire in Emrys' rooms, and Emrys becomes Merlin.

Arthur learns three things about Merlin.

The first, that makes him feel guilty about his own rather half-hearted studies, is this: Merlin loves his subject. He reads like a thirsty man tips water into his mouth. It also makes Arthur worry that his own constant presence is keeping Merlin from studying, and that their friendship is still so new and fragile that politeness stops Merlin kicking Arthur out. But he doesn't leave. He can't.

The second is that he likes Merlin's rooms better than his own, despite their lack of luxury. The spartan look of them calms him, the strange paintings on the walls intrigue him and it's soothing to be surrounded by books and artist's materials. He walks around the room and pokes at things, touching them, stopping at the mantelpiece to pick up a small dragon carved from a piece of wood.

"What's this?"

Merlin gives him that quick, dark, sidelong glance. "My father made it."

His voice is low and it's all he volunteers. Arthur stands holding the dragon for a minute longer, his fingertip following the whittle marks.

The third thing is something of an epiphany, and Arthur is embarrassed that it's taken him so long to discover this: the secret of Merlin's perpetually unlit cigarettes. He doesn't light them for the simple reason that he can't afford to buy them very often. He lets them hang from the corner of his distractingly pretty mouth because he likes the feel of them, and only occasionally lights one.

Arthur begins to provide Merlin with cigarettes in as unobtrusive a manner as he can muster. The helpless banality of it amuses and depresses him in turns: of all the things he wants to give Merlin, he ends up giving him tobacco.

***

Merlin is standing by the window with the bright yellow canopy of a chestnut tree behind him, talking about Wilkie Collins. Arthur hasn't read Wilkie Collins and doesn't intend to; he listens to Merlin's voice rather than his words. The window is open and the sounds of everyday life come floating in; shouts and laughs, dry leaves rustling in the wind, the clatter of bicycle wheels on cobblestones. When Merlin turns his profile against the light his likeness to a Renaissance angel is undeniable: the straight nose, the shape of the downcast eye, the curve of the lip.

Merlin puts a cigarette in his mouth, looks up and smiles, and Arthur forgets about angels and saints and sees a long-limbed undergrad pushing a tumble of dark hair off his forehead, a smile made lopsided by the cigarette. Merlin is so real, so touchable, and so very unreachable.

Arthur strikes a match and holds it out to Merlin, who leans forward and cups his hand around Arthur's to protect the flame.

Arthur closes his eyes.

***

Arthur's rooms are like himself, Merlin thinks – warm, handsome, flooded with light. The enormous rug that covers almost the entire floor has an intricate pattern of blue and gold that sets off Arthur's own colouring to perfection. The whisky tumbler in Merlin's hand is heavy and cool, the liquid an amber swirl in its clear shell of glass. He tilts the tumbler slowly from side to side and watches the surface stay level, watches firelight glow at the bottom of the glass like a jewel.

"Leon's lending me his motor tomorrow," Arthur says, leaning forward in his chair. "Feel like going for a drive? There's something I'd like to show you, if you have the time."

Merlin can tell from his carefully casual tone that the answer is important, and the prospect of a whole day with Arthur away from university, just the two of them, sends a shiver of anticipation down his spine.

"It would be heaven to get out of here for a day," he replies softly.

Blue and gold, amber and fire. He is honestly not sure what intoxicates him more, the whisky or Arthur's smile. It's dangerous. Sometimes it feels like he would agree to anything, tell Arthur anything. Everything.

***

The world glitters with frost, made of silver, pale gold, pale copper. They travel among rolling hills and bare brown fields under a mother-of-pearl sky.

Arthur is a good driver, less reckless than Merlin would have thought, far more considerate. Merlin is a little moved that Arthur has noticed how Merlin is always cold. Only his nose is cold now, where he's tucked into a nest of blankets and wearing motoring goggles, gloves and a muffler, all provided by Arthur who keeps giving him quick, delighted smiles.

They come to a halt halfway up a hill where a lone oak tree resides at the top; Arthur jumps out of the car and Merlin extricates himself from the blankets and follows him up to the tree. The colours of the landscape are muted and the view is gentle rather than overwhelming.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" Merlin asks, watching the winter light play over Arthur's hair and making it pale as straw.

"No, this is just a detour. I like this place."

Merlin nods and leans against the oak tree. The tweed of his upturned collar is rough and warm against his cheek. Arthur is looking at him, _looking_ until Merlin trembles.

"Merlin and Arthur," he says slowly. " _Mer_ lin.”

Merlin shrugs; Arthur doesn't let go.

"With a name like that," he says, eyes intense, "you ought to be able to do magic." A pause. "Are you?"

Fear rushes through Merlin's veins like heat. The metallic taste of it clings to the back of his throat but he swallows it, hoping his reaction isn't visible. Arthur's question can't possibly be serious, because who in their right mind would admit their magical abilities to a Pendragon? But there's a devil on Merlin’s shoulder whispering in his ear, and just to see what will happen, Merlin replies through the thunder of his heart: "Of course I am," adopting as light and impertinent a tone as he can and curling his hands into fists in his pockets.

He listens to his pulse hammering, watches as the look in Arthur's eyes turns strangely soft. Then Arthur says, very quietly: "I'm not my father, you know." And before Merlin has a reaction to that, Arthur peers up at the sky through the bare, gnarled oak branches and says in a very different tone, conversationally: "Well, Merlin, if you can do magic, then you should change the seasons. Make the leaves burst open. Make everything green. I hate this time of year."

And Merlin breathes again, bewildered and relieved. "Oh, I could do that," he says smoothly, "if I wanted to. I just choose not to."

Arthur laughs and walks back down the hill but Merlin lingers, shaking now that the danger is past, leaning against the trunk of the oak. He presses his palms against it, sensing its ancient, sleeping soul. If he calls it, if he wakes it up and makes the dormant buds open out of season, if he makes the sap rise on this frosty day, the tree will die. It would be a great pity to kill something so old and beautiful on a whim. Merlin runs his hand down the trunk, reassuringly. No, he wouldn't do that, not even for Arthur.

Before he follows Arthur back to the car, he breaks off a small twig and hides it in his coat pocket.

***

The airfield is like another world, a world where Arthur can breathe, where he is free.

There are shouted greetings from mechanics and aeroplane owners and Arthur returns them, grinning. The look on Merlin's face is astonished – whatever he had expected, it clearly wasn't this. At the far end of the field a Deperdussin is coming in for landing. By the sound of it, something is not quite right with the engine.

"Over here," Arthur says, striding towards the hangar.

His heart is hammering. He can tell Merlin knows less than nothing about aeroplanes and flying, but it's still wildly, ridiculously important that he approves of the Dragonfly.

When Arthur opens the heavy door and light washes in to glint on her wooden nose and polished propeller, Merlin makes a sound like a gasp, his eyes fixed on the machine.

"Is it yours?" he asks a little breathlessly.

"Yes," Arthur says, unable to keep the pride out of his voice or the smile off his lips, "she's mine."

Merlin walks around her slowly, trailing a finger along her side in reverent curiosity. "It seems so... frail. Like it would fall apart up there, in the air. Shattered by the wind."

It sounds faintly like a question and Arthur shakes his head. "No, no, she's tougher than that. Too bad she's a single-seater, or I'd have taken you up."

The look on Merlin's face is indescribable. "I... I'm not... I don't..."

Arthur begins to laugh, but before he can say anything, someone calls his name.

"Arthur?" It's Jack in blue overalls, a streak of oil down his cheek. "I picked up the gasket for you on the way."

"Oh, brilliant! Thanks."

Arthur takes the cold, flat metal ring like a treasure; Jack gives him a grin and a nod and leaves.

"That was Jack, my mechanic. The gasket blew and we had to have a new one made specially."

"He calls you by your first name?"

"Well," Arthur says, glad that they've arrived at this important point, "that's one of the best things about this place – that there's no hierarchy. All social differences, everything like that, is left outside the gates. There are no servants or masters. If you like aeroplanes and flying, then you belong here, no matter what you can or can't do, and no matter if you own the machine or repair it."

Something falls across Merlin's face like a shutter. He looks down at his scuffed boots and rubs a finger over the tip of the Dragonfly's wing. "There are always hierarchies," he mutters.

Arthur frowns. "What?"

"There are always hierarchies," Merlin says, louder, looking up to meet Arthur's eyes. "There always will be. You can pretend all you like, but ask Jack whether it matters if you own the machine or not. Ask Jack what he thinks about masters and servants."

His voice grows steadier and stronger as he speaks and he tilts his chin up, making Arthur clench his hands at his sides.

"Look," Arthur says hotly, "you don't know the first thing about the airfield, or about flying, or how things work here. You've only just arrived, you can't go making assumptions – "

Merlin is still looking at him. His eyes are dark and hard. "Only people like you," he says in a low voice, "will claim there are no differences. The ones at the bottom of the hierarchy – the hierarchy you say doesn't exist – the ones like me... We _know_ it's there. No matter what you say, Arthur, however much you pretend it's not there... for us it will always be. For us it doesn't go away. We'll never have your kind of freedom."

It's like being punched and Arthur staggers a little. He hates this side of Merlin that surfaces occasionally, the bitterness in him. He can't stand the thought of Merlin having _reason_ to be bitter, but he can't think of a reply that wouldn't be insensitive, defensive or patronising. They've never seriously discussed the subject of their social and financial differences, even if the differences are obvious to them both and always there between them. Arthur knows the day will come when they have to talk about it, but he doesn't want it to be today. The hangar feels dark and cold, and all the enlightenment and equality and freedom that Arthur normally relishes on a day at the airfield are gone.

Arthur looks down at his feet, unsure what to say. He had meant for this to be a perfect day, happy, and instead he has made Merlin angry and uncomfortable, made them both uncomfortable. _These things don't matter_ , he wants to say. _Don't you see? All this is only trappings. The only thing that matters is who you truly are._ But perhaps this is part of his blue-eyed idealism that Merlin seems to despise.

He feels chastened. He believed himself to be so enlightened and progressive, felt himself to be a true radical here at the airfield, calling everyone by first name and treating everyone the same. But perhaps Merlin is right and he's been pompous and self-congratulating, and missed something obvious and fundamental. Now he can’t help but seeing it through Merlin's eyes in all its depressing bleakness, realising he has indulged in a fantasy at other people's expense. It's as if Merlin held up a mirror in front of him, catching him unawares, and he can see that he’s behaved just like the boys he despised at school, the kind of people he still despises – the Kays and the Valiants of this world, who think it all belongs to them.

Arthur draws a shaky breath and looks up helplessly, looks at Merlin and wonders what he can possibly say, how he can explain, what he can do to show that he understands.

"Merlin, I..." he tries, but his voice trails off into uneasy silence.

"I'm sorry," Merlin says at last, grabbing up his abandoned politeness like a shield. "Your aeroplane is beautiful." He seems determined to change the subject. "Will you be flying today?"

The hangar is cold and their breath is faintly visible. Arthur shudders. He has lost his taste for the aerodrome.

"No." He shakes his head. "Not today. I just wanted you to see her because she is... she's important to me." There's an awkward silence. "What do you want to do – should we find a pub and have lunch, and then go back to Cambridge?"

Merlin just nods, trailing his finger along the side of the Dragonfly again as he walks back to Arthur, and Arthur reaches out to touch the polished wood of her propeller, like he is touching her for good luck. When he closes the door behind them he is surprised to see that the sky is still blue.

***

In the motorcar on the way back to town, Merlin shivers despite the blankets and burrows deeper into them, casting his thoughts back to the strange, magnificent craft in the hangar. When he walked around it and felt the wood and metal and oiled silk under his fingers he could sense the entire structure, every single part of it, how they were put together, how they related to each other, worked with each other.

It leaves him shaken, that Arthur knows how to control this machine, how to ride the wind, how to fly. When Arthur had asked if Merlin wanted to learn, Merlin had suddenly thought that perhaps he already knew how to fly – not in a machine, but by his own strength, free and soaring in the air. It never occurred to him before, that maybe his magic can do this for him.

One day he will try.

Something still feels a little off between them when they part, a caution that isn't normally there, like they're skimming over the surface tension like water insects and ignoring the depths underneath their feet.

Back in his rooms, Merlin fishes the oak twig out of his pocket and holds it up before him, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger. He takes a breath and makes the leaves open, fresh and green, feeling the burst of pain and joy as the buds break.

Perhaps one day he'll be able to tell Arthur about this, to show him. Perhaps there will be a time when magic can be allowed to pour forth in all its powerful beauty and no longer needs to be kept in the darkest corners of the soul.

***

Arthur sleeps uneasily that night, dreaming endlessly about Merlin with his back turned, refusing to let Arthur catch up with him or see his face. He wakes up into the darkness of his room, clammy with sweat, heart racing. The rain is pattering on the window and the alarm clock shows twenty-five past six. There's no point trying to go back to sleep. Arthur yawns and starts the new day; makes tea, eats an apple and reads an article in preparation for class.

When he's finished it's light outside, a grey December light that barely deserves the name. He rubs his eyes and thinks of Merlin, how important he's become in three short months, how central to Arthur's life, and whether what happened at the airfield yesterday has changed anything between them.

 _I should have thought things through,_ he thinks with his face in his hands, shutting out what little daylight there is. He had wanted to show Merlin the Dragonfly like a confidence, a way of saying _this is who I am, this is where my heart is, do you accept me?_ , and what Merlin had seen was bragging and boasting, a rich boy play-acting in a pretend world that he could enter and exit at will.

They had both been wrong. Arthur ought to have explained the reason for the visit; Merlin ought to have recognised Arthur's sincerity.

And the situation must be rectified, or Arthur won't be able to focus on anything.

He washes and shaves, puts on a clean shirt and new collar and goes to knock on Merlin's door. It's silent and solid and doesn't yield. Arthur glares at it and gives it a vicious kick. He hates to leave things unresolved, and now he'll have to rely on someone else's lecture notes.

***

"You seem out of it today, Emrys," says DuLac as they file out from translation class carrying their books.

Merlin gives him half a smile and a one-shouldered shrug. Nothing feels right today, everything is half-hearted and unfinished. He must find Arthur, and the realisation that he _needs_ Arthur worries him. Merlin is used to being self-sufficient; he can't be this dependent on someone he's known for three months, can't be this invested in _anyone_. Definitely not someone who can't know about his magic.

DuLac is asking about an ablative construction and Merlin replies absent-mindedly. His thoughts are occupied with the hurt look on Arthur's face at the airfield yesterday, but while he is truly sorry, he can't wish his words unsaid. They were true and he just couldn't play along with Arthur's illusions, noble or stupid, idealistic or naive.

"Someone has a grudge...?" DuLac asks mildly as they reach Merlin's rooms.

The dark wood of the door sports a distinct, dusty bootprint perfectly in the middle. Merlin's heart speeds up and he needs to clear his throat.

"Seems they do."

"Must have had some force, to leave a print like that." DuLac is grinning. "Better go and face the enemy, Emrys."

Merlin manages a smile.

Enemy? No, it's not as bad as that, but he's still nervous as he approaches Arthur’s rooms.

 _Arthur._ He loves the name, loves the way he has to slide the tip of his tongue between his teeth to say it. He calls it now, hating the pleading note in his voice as he knocks.

"Arthur?"

The door opens and Arthur lets him in without a word. He looks tense, nowhere near the laughing image that is permanently imprinted on Merlin's mind. It occurs to Merlin that Arthur is nervous too, not angry.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he says simply. Arthur's eyes meet his, and the look in them makes Merlin catch his breath. There's... hope, yes, and something else. Merlin is usually good at reading people and sensing their thoughts, but not Arthur, never Arthur. "I think I misunderstood you," he continues, "and I was too blunt." He pauses to watch Arthur swallow, watch the tense throat. "I liked your aeroplane," he adds quietly. "No, wait. That sounds... condescending. And insincere. Sorry. I was _impressed_." He fidgets, brushes lint from his sleeve, doesn't even know what he's saying, shuffles his feet and probably looks just as awkward as he feels. Arthur is beginning to smile. "It's a beautiful machine," Merlin says, braver now that he realises Arthur isn't going to throw him out. "But you didn't tell me anything about it. Why do you own an aeroplane?”

Arthur is truly smiling now, lit up, surrounded by those hazy flames Merlin has seen around him from the beginning, enough to make Merlin blink at the light.

"Don't hover in the doorway," Arthur says. "You're making me nervous. And cold. Come in and shut the door. Tea?" And while he makes the tea and Merlin sinks into one of the armchairs by the fire, shaky with relief, Arthur adds: "I've always been fascinated with things flying. I used to watch bees and dragonflies, wondering about their aerodynamics. When I was twelve I found a book in the library at home, about Leonardo da Vinci, with that picture of the aerodynamic screw, and I began to read everything I could find about flying machines. My father used to scoff at me, but I persisted. The very idea of it, the idea of man conquering the skies as well as earth and water... it still thrills me." He throws a glance at Merlin, who shudders in his chair and wants to get up, cross the floor and kiss Arthur on the mouth. The look in his eyes, the tone of his voice... there is something so irresistible about people talking about their passions.

"People used to laugh at flying machines," Arthur continues, getting animated, "but look what happened. Blériot crossed the Channel, Garros crossed the Mediterranean, and no one's laughing now. When the Titanic sank last year, it was like a symbol of our time. Ships are on their way out; aeroplanes are taking over. It won't be long before someone crosses the Atlantic.”

He hands Merlin a cup of tea and sprawls into the other armchair. "When I was sixteen," he says, "I persuaded Father to let me have flying lessons, and when he asked if I wanted a motorcar as a graduation present when I left school, I said I'd much rather have an aeroplane." He throws Merlin a quick, self-deprecating smile. "I know; you don't need to tell me what a fortunate, privileged bastard I am. The airfield taught me that much, at least."

Merlin begins to protest or apologise but Arthur stops him. His colours are set off perfectly by the blue-and-gold carpet, firelight moves over his face, and Merlin needs to swallow a thickness in his throat.

"I'm sorry, too," Arthur says so quietly that Merlin has to lean forward to hear him. "We misunderstood each other yesterday. I was being stupid, you were offended and all I really wanted was to show you the Dragonfly, because she's important to me - flying is - and..." He stops and looks at Merlin. "... and I wanted you to know about that part of my life."

He doesn't say _and you're important to me_ but it's implied, and Merlin has a dizzying sense of having been here before, in this situation, looking into Arthur's earnest eyes and acknowledging what's there between them, all the unsaid words.

Something moves inside him at that thought. Something stirs in the depth of his mind like a sleeping dragon at a long forgotten command, a call from beyond the ages.

***

After that talk in his rooms, Arthur realises he is done for, utterly and completely. With Merlin, he no longer has the sense or strength to look away like he did at school when he was attracted to another boy.

Everything Merlin does, everything he is, resonates deep within Arthur.

He loves Merlin's thick dark hair that curls softly when it needs a cut, he loves the dimples that come into evidence when Merlin is pleased or amused, the endearing way Merlin's smile is silly and asymmetric. Arthur wants to kiss Merlin's childishly overlarge ears and his eyelids, delicate and shimmering like the inside of an oyster. He loves how Merlin's eyes can shift from deepest darkness to brightest glittering sapphire blue, loves the mouth that is sinful in its fullness. He watches the curve of Merlin's neck disappear under his collar, the thin elegant bones of his wrists, the long artist's fingers that play with a pen, a cigarette, a coin like Merlin knows exactly how to drive Arthur insane. Merlin's frayed cuffs, the small shadow below his bottom lip, the sweep of his eyelashes when he's self-conscious, the dark hair on his pale forearms when his sleeves are rolled up, the way he pinches the bridge of his nose when he's tired – every detail is important; every detail shakes Arthur to the core.

There's no point trying to deny it. He _wants_ Merlin, all of him; aches for him in the dark as he slips his hand underneath the covers and listens to the sound of his own breathing.

Whenever he sees Merlin he spends every minute wanting to touch him and he can't, he can't, he can't.

***

Saying goodbye shouldn't be this difficult. They're only parting for three weeks, but it feels like something is being torn out of Arthur as he wishes Merlin a Happy Christmas at the foot of the stairs. They're friends, he thinks, and not likely to be more than that; Merlin likes Arthur well enough but not in the way Arthur would like him to. In a few short months, Arthur's world has come to revolve around this tall, shy undergrad, and an irrational part of him is terrified that they won't meet again, that this is the last time they talk.

Merlin is happy to be going home and his joy leaves a dull, hollow ache in Arthur's chest, an unreasonable longing for things he can't have. Most of the time he doesn't want to be anyone else - he's a Pendragon, he knows his worth - but sometimes, just sometimes, or even just _once_ , he'd like to have a real family to go home to, somewhere warm and welcoming where people have missed him.

They're standing in the archway just off Arthur's rooms, facing each other. Their breath is visible like clouds; the red winter sun is setting and the last, slanting rays send sparks flying off Merlin's hair.

Before they part, Merlin hands Arthur a brown paper parcel tied with string.

"For you," he says, "from my mother." A faint blush is spreading over his cheekbones. "I told her how you're never sent anything from home," he explains sheepishly, "so she wanted to..."

His voice trails off and Arthur bends his head over the parcel, surprised and a little moved and more than a little embarrassed at the thought of Merlin talking about him with his mother, making him look pathetic.

"Thank you," he says, "or, I mean, please thank your mother for me. Should I... " - he waves vaguely towards the parcel - "should I open it now...?"

"You can wait until you're back in your rooms," Merlin replies with a quick smile. "Or on the train."

"Is it embarrassing?" Arthur finds he can grin, like something has loosened its grip on him. "Will it ruin my reputation?"

"It's from my _mother_ ," Merlin points out, looking mildly scandalised, and Arthur throws his head back and laughs.

"I meant, embarrassing in a things-that-mothers-send-you way," he explains, and he loves Merlin's smile, _God_ , he loves it. Merlin is still a bit pink and Arthur grasps at straws. "Do you..." he begins, and hesitates. "Are you a letter-writer kind of person?"

"Not particularly." Merlin looks surprised. "I mean, I write to my mother once a week..."

"Ah, the model son." Arthur shoves his shoulder against Merlin's because he can't stand having several inches of air between them. "No, I meant... to be honest, Christmas is a pretty grim affair with my family. It's glittery and shiny and story-book fancy on the surface, but underneath it's just... empty." He catches himself when he realises just how much he has revealed about his home life.

"Like a glass bauble," Merlin says gravely, "pretty and hollow," and they laugh again until Arthur finds Merlin's simile uncomfortably spot-on, and stops.

"It's torture, Merlin, _torture_ ," he says dramatically, raising his knuckles to his forehead to cover up his neediness. "Well, Morgana will be there and although I hate to admit it she keeps me sane, but, you know. If you need _Morgana_ to keep you sane, then you know it's bad."

There's another flash of Merlin's dimples, and Arthur never told him what Morgana said after the first time she met Merlin: "What a gorgeous little puppy, Arthur. It'd be a pity if he escaped the leash." It would make Merlin hate her; he doesn't know her like Arthur does, can't read her like Arthur can. He will only hear condescension where Arthur hears adoration, loud and clear.

"I'll write to you," Merlin says. "I'll start on the train."

Warmth tingles in Arthur's fingertips and he throws an arm around Merlin's shoulders in an awkward semi-hug. "Thanks. Me too. Happy Christmas, Merlin."

"And you." The shy smile is a Christmas gift in itself. Arthur wonders if Merlin has any idea what it does to him.

Back in his rooms, Arthur unwraps the parcel. It's a box of homemade biscuits - not the hearty oats-and-currant ones that are sent to Merlin, but smaller, flatter, smooth and refined. When he puts one in his mouth it melts on his tongue, sweet with honey, zingy with lemon zest, warm with cinnamon and kindness. Arthur thinks of Christmas in the vast, chilly rooms at the Pendragon estate, of Uther's absence, of expensive, impersonal gifts that no one enjoys either giving or receiving. He wonders what Merlin's Christmases are like, what it's like to have so little and be so generous with it.

He must remember to write Merlin's mother a thank you note.

***

Merlin leans his head against the window and watches the wintry landscape rush past. His mind is still in Cambridge and Arthur's face is superimposed on fields and woods and villages like a laughing ghost. When Merlin tries to sleep the image is still there behind his eyelids, and he gives up. He promised to write to Arthur from the train, so he sits up and fishes out pencil and notepad. Looking around stealthily, he begins to jot down observations and make up stories about his fellow passengers that he hopes will amuse.

 _...The stout woman across the aisle is nervous about the new hat she bought in town. She loves it, can't stop reaching up to pat and stroke the feathers, but she's afraid her husband will find it garish. (He'll be right.) And the man over in the corner, with the four-day stubble that's almost a beard but not quite... He quarrelled with his wife and went on a beer binge that left his throat lined with sandpaper and his pockets empty. His wife..._

The observations peter out as Merlin chews the pencil and toys with the idea of a second letter, a letter containing all the things he _wants_ to say. In his mind's eye the notepad fills with his spindly, minuscule handwriting, detailing to Arthur all the things he finds so beautiful about him. _Your voice that reaches inside me, your hair that I want to push off your forehead when it flops down, your throat when you throw your head back (Christ, Arthur, I want to watch you do that under me). Your profile, your hands... your mouth, your mouth, your mouth._ He closes his eyes and exhales, squirms a little on the hard third-class bench as his mind blooms with the image of Arthur's throat arching, eyes falling shut and lips parting as he clutches at Merlin's hips.

Merlin shakes himself, sits up straight and arranges his coat in his lap. This is not a daydream to have in public, not to mention how disastrous it would be to have something like that in writing. Merlin cringes a little, imagining the appalled, disbelieving look in Arthur's eyes as he reads. He quickly stuffs pencil and notepad back in his coat pocket and sits back, trying hard to think of nothing.

The landscape outside is a grey-green blur and the image of Arthur is still there, taunting.

***

When Merlin opens the door to the tiny house, he is met by the warm, yeasty smell of fresh bread. He closes his eyes for a moment, inhales and smiles. This is _home_. He's missed it.

"Merlin?" Hunith calls from the kitchen.

She is kneading dough, holding up sticky hands and wiggling her fingers in apology. When Merlin hugs her anyway she gives him an awkward elbow hug back, keeping her hands away from his clothes. He's forgotten how small she is, forgotten that he can rest his chin on top of her head. He pulls back a little and smiles down at her, brushing a streak of flour from her forehead and kissing the cleaned spot.

"It's lovely to have you home, Merlin," she says, her eyes soft. "I've missed you."

"I've only been away four months, Mother." Four months, and his life has changed. Four months and the kitchen looks small and drab with its scuffed chairs and faded curtains. It's like he's seeing it for the first time, seeing it through someone else's eyes.

"Sit down and tell me everything while I finish this," Hunith says.

"But I already have," he teases. " _Everything's_ been in my letters."

"Ha!" Hunith returns to the dough. "You're like a dog on a walk when you write, Merlin. You start out with one thing but when you smell something interesting in another direction, you run there."

"I do not!" But he is laughing, and he tells her what the turrets look like at sunset, tells her about punting on the river, about the library and the cricket matches and Professor Gaius, but he doesn't say a word about Arthur. His head and his heart need to catch up with him first. The three weeks ahead of him feel like an eternity, a sea of time keeping them apart.

Merlin watches Hunith finish her kneading. She places the ball of dough in a wooden bowl to rise, sprinkles a pinch of flour over it and covers the bowl with a tea towel. When she has washed her hands she comes over and hugs him to her so his cheek rests against her softness. He breathes in her smell of clean cotton and the lavender sachets she likes to place in her chest of drawers and among the linens; she smooths his hair and takes his face in her hands, lifting it so their eyes can meet. Her callused hands cup his chin and jaw like he is something frail and precious and endlessly loved.

"My beautiful, beautiful boy," she says.

"Mother..."

"But you're as thin as a garden rake," she continues and straightens her back, afraid to be sentimental, as always. "Is there no decent food to be found in Cambridge, or do you just forget that everyone needs to eat, even you? I know you, Merlin," she adds and raises a finger when he begins to protest. "Well, you'll have a hearty supper tonight. Set the table, there's a good lad. And no magic," she finishes softly and kisses his hair.

When Merlin has set out cutlery and glasses and is reaching for plates on a shelf, Hunith says with her back to him: "Tell me about Arthur."

A plate slips from his fingers and breaks into three clean-edged pieces on the floor.

"Sorry," he murmurs as he crouches to pick them up.

Hunith turns to look at him. "I hope," she says, "that Arthur is not like his father...?"

Merlin frowns up at her. "Do you really think I'd enjoy his company if he was?"

Hunith smiles then and his heart goes soft. Have the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes appeared in the past four months, or did he just never notice them before? If Cambridge has taught him anything so far, he thinks, it's to observe.

Over supper Merlin tells Hunith about his one almost-discussion with Arthur about magic, on the hillside under the oak tree when Arthur said "I'm not my father".

"Well, he isn't," Hunith says matter-of-factly. "Everyone is their own person, and if he takes the trouble to emphasise the difference to you in the context of magic, then I think it must mean that he... Oh, Merlin, you must be careful. However much you like him, do be careful. Please."

"Arthur wouldn't..." Merlin says with his gaze on his empty plate, "he'd never..." His voice trails off as he reminds himself that he doesn't know that, really doesn't know Arthur all that well. "Don't worry," he adds quietly. "I'm not telling him about my magic." _Not yet._

Hunith gets up and collects their plates. "Sooner or later it will have to change, Merlin," she says. "Sooner or later we'll get laws creating justice for magical and non-magical people alike. We'll have laws prohibiting people hurting others with magic, same as with other means. Laws that don't condemn people for what they _are._ "

This is a conversation they've had so many times that Merlin is bored with it already, and he doesn't reply because there's nothing to say. He has nothing to add. He doubts very much that the day will come, at least while either of them are alive.

"They're too scared of us," he says at last. "Of what they don't understand. It will take a revolution."

Merlin has hardly ever seen Hunith frightened, but when she turns around at the sink she looks alarmed. Her eyes are wide and pleading.

"Merlin, _please_ ," she says. "You must promise me to be careful. Don't..."

"Don't what?" Merlin interrupts. "Don't get into trouble? Don't speak up for the things you believe in, for what you are?" He bites his tongue as bitterness wells up, tries to stop it getting past his lips. None of this is Hunith's fault; she isn't making the laws. "I'm sorry, Mother," he adds quietly, and Hunith turns back to the sink with tears in her eyes.

Merlin sits in silence, following the grain of the wood with a fingertip, rubbing at the weave of the tablecloth, until Hunith comes back to the table and sets two cups of coffee in front of them.

"I'm just worried," she says quietly. "But I do trust you, Merlin. I know you'll do what's right, whatever that is and wherever it will take you."

He looks up then, and their smiles meet as he reaches across the table to squeeze her hand.

***

Christmas Eve comes in grey and sullen. Merlin sits at the desk in his tiny room, finishing his letter to Arthur before he goes downstairs to have breakfast.

"You should go and see Freya," Hunith says over her porridge. "She asks after you."

Merlin nods, turning his teacup counterclockwise and watching the dregs swirl at the bottom of the reddish liquid. Outside the window the sky is the colour of lead, heavy with rain. Hunith is right, he should go and see Freya, but it's more awkward than she knows, more complicated than just seeing an old friend.

***

 _Freya is five years older than Merlin. At seventeen, she finds herself with child and refuses to reveal who the father is. The village is small and gossip is ripe, but this is a secret that won’t let itself be uncovered. If Freya had had family somewhere, or money, she'd have gone away to have her baby, but as it is she has to stay, making the best of it because she has to, making virtue of necessity. And Hunith, who had found herself in the same situation thirteen years ago, takes her under her wing._

 _Merlin adores Freya, loves the baby too when it arrives. It's only as he gets older that he realises how pretty Freya is - or how lonely she is; it's only as he gets older that he notices the sadness in her eyes. Merlin knows about loneliness._

 _It's his final year at school and spring is covering the land with green. Daffodils dance by the walls and on the slopes, and the air is as sweet as it can only be in April when you are seventeen years old._

 _Merlin stands in the muddy patch behind Hunith's house, stealthily sharing a cigarette with Freya in the dark._

 _They're standing so close their arms are touching. Merlin feels it like a tingle, a faint electric current, and when he turns to look at Freya he sees her like he's never seen her. The light from the kitchen window touches her skin and hair and he is intensely aware of the curves of her body only inches away, her lips around the cigarette, her eyelashes casting shadows down her cheeks. Freya, who he knows so well and not at all; Freya who is brave and sad and whose loneliness speaks to his._

 _Merlin's hand moves of its own accord, gently taking the cigarette from her and dropping it in the mud for his foot to crush before he touches her chin and lifts her face. In all his life he has never truly wanted a girl - he's kissed girls his own age, but those kisses were all giggles and blushes, closed lips and innocence. In his dreams he's kissed men with hard mouths and scratchy stubble, nothing like this - this is Freya and he wants her._

 _There's a tremor threatening to surface in his voice when he asks: "Can I kiss you?"_

 _Her eyes widen and she inhales sharply, surprised. When she doesn't reply, Merlin leans in and touches his mouth to hers, dizzy with his own boldness, shocked almost when she responds for a second. Then she stiffens and pushes him away with her palms against his chest, not looking at him. Her eyes are in shadow and he can't see their expression; he doesn't let her go._

 _"I'm sorry," he breathes, but he isn't sorry, he wants to do it again, his mind zeroing in on that one thing. "Freya, I..."_

 _She is standing in the circle of his arms, still with her hands on his chest, but she has stopped pushing at him._

 _"Oh, Merlin," she says, very quietly, and again he lifts her chin so she has to look at him._

 _"I want to kiss you again. Please, Freya." The words make him tremble._

 _Without waiting for a reply, he leans down. Her mouth is soft under his, lips parting; her fingers slide up into his hair and he clutches at her waist breathing hard through his nose. This is a_ woman _, he thinks in a heady rush, far from those giggling adolescent girls... She is pushing at him again, pulling away from him, biting her lip and looking close to tears. Merlin has no idea what is happening, doesn't understand why she would want to cry. He is muzzy with warmth and closeness and pulls her back in to kiss her neck, panting against her skin, inhaling the scent of her. All he wants is to continue what he started, go further, so far he doesn't know where they'll end up. No, he does know where he wants them to end up. His body is pulsing with this new sensation, hard against her curves._

 _"Merlin," Freya says, pushing him away very firmly, "you need to stop. I can't do this. We can't."_

 _"What?" he demands, unfocused. "Why?"_

 _"Merlin, you are... you're Hunith's son; you're like a _brother_ to me. And you're... so young. So very, very young."_

 _"I'm seventeen," says Merlin breathlessly, "I'm old enough."_

 _But Freya shakes her head, looking up at him. "Oh, Merlin, you're the sweetest boy, you really are, but I can't do this."_

 _She arranges her blouse, smooths down her hair and hurries back inside to Hunith, leaving Merlin shaky and unsatisfied in the dark. His hands feel heavy, like they're all wrong if they can't touch her._

 _But he just achieved something, he thinks, lighting another cigarette and looking up at the cold stars. He just took a step into the grown-up world._

***

Merlin walks along the street, flooded with memories vivid enough to make his face hot with embarrassment.

Freya is behind the bar when he steps into the pub; her face lights up when he leans over and kisses her cheek, making him feel like a traitor.

"Look at you," she says. "Quite the gentleman. You look so _refined_."

She is teasing but her eyes still hold their old sadness. The pub is nearly empty and she sits down with him for a minute. She is very pretty, he can see that, but there is nothing left of what he felt for her. There is only Arthur; Arthur has obliterated everything else.

They sit together for a while, they talk and don't say what they mean, they talk and say nothing. Merlin looks at Freya and does not want her; she looks at him and sees it.

"I have to get back to work," she says as she rises from her seat.

Merlin drains his glass. "I made a Christmas present for Cora," he says. "Where is she? With Mrs Donnington?"

Freya nods; Merlin wishes her a Happy Christmas and flees. He stops outside for a moment, leaning against the wall to take huge gulps of the cold air before he goes to find Cora.

***

Hunith holds up a letter in front of Merlin. "Your Arthur has written to me!"

"He's not _my_ Arthur," says Merlin and turns away quickly so he can blush unnoticed.

There's a stream of delighted exclamations from her as she reads. When she hugs him she still has the letter in her hand.

"What a sweet, lovely boy," she says. "To think that he took the trouble! It was only a box of biscuits, and he makes it sound like I sent him the crown jewels."

Merlin hugs her back. "He says his Christmases are like glass baubles," he murmurs. "Glittery and empty. I think he needs..."

The word "love" is about to slip off his tongue but he catches it in time. Hunith doesn't notice. She's pink with pleasure and talks about Arthur for the next two days, which Merlin doesn't neglect to mention in his next letter to Arthur. He imagines Arthur reading it, laughing and blushing, and closes his eyes at the image.

God, will this Christmas break never end?


	3. Almost Eternity

_And you yourself, what do you know? You called forth  
past ages in your lover. What feelings stormed up  
from bygone beings!_  
...  
 _you touch each other  
so blissfully because the caress holds back,  
because the place you tender ones cover does not disappear,  
because you feel pure permanence underneath.  
So you promise yourself almost eternity  
from the embrace._

 

"Merlin!" Arthur bangs his fist on Merlin's door, grinning with anticipation. "Lancelot had a crate of wine for Christmas. Merlin, are you in there?"

A series of small, shuffling noises on the other side of the door tells him that Merlin is indeed there. When it opens Arthur takes a step back, opening his mouth to speak but not getting a sound across his lips. Merlin's face is like a shock, like he's forgotten what Merlin looks like over the past three weeks – the thick dark hair and sharp cheekbones, the electric blue eyes that seem to see everything, relentlessly probing beneath the surface. The fact that Merlin is _here_ , real and close, makes Arthur feel lightheaded. For a moment they just look at one another, and a then a smile turns up the corners of Merlin's pretty mouth.

With an effort Arthur shakes himself. "Come on!" He points up the stairs. "Let's get drunk!"

Merlin laughs at that, and the sparkle in his eyes ignites something in Arthur, making his palms damp and his knees weak. He leans his shoulder against the door frame and tries to look casual and not at all overwhelmed.

"I can't just barge in uninvited and drink DuLac’s wine...?" Merlin says, and there's a question mark at the end like he only wants to be persuaded.

"I'm inviting you now," says Arthur impatiently, letting go of the door frame. "You don't want to miss this. Lancelot's family are winemakers in Burgundy, didn't you know?"

Merlin shakes his head.

"You can be sure he got the best vintage. Come on, Merlin, you can't pass this up!"

"Arthur!" Lancelot calls from upstairs. "Stop dawdling! Emrys, you too!"

Merlin comes away like someone shoved him in the back, following Arthur up the stairs. Lancelot waves them inside and pushes glasses into their hands. He and Leon seem to be halfway through a bottle already. Leon throws his arm around Merlin’s shoulders, leaning on him until Merlin’s knees buckle and he looks half embarrassed and half amused. Arthur watches as he drinks deeply from his glass, thinking this is going to be a great evening.

***

Merlin has always liked DuLac - Lancelot, he must remember to call him that - from the little he knows of him, from chats after translation class and random meetings on the stairs to the occasional coffee in Lancelot's rooms. He's never seen Lancelot be anything but nice to anyone, and he can feel the kindness and honesty deep down through the layers of his personality, down to the core. He likes Leon de Boron as well, he decides; likes the way Leon meets people's eyes and really sees them when he does, and the smile that makes his face all sunny. Arthur surrounds himself with good people, Merlin thinks, which does say something about Arthur, too.

Tonight they're all making an effort to include Merlin in anything they talk about, despite the fact that they've clearly known each other for most of their lives and have a long shared history. They make a point of making him feel part of the group.

Merlin has always been careful with alcohol, afraid he'll lose control of his magic if he drinks too much. He's been drunk on beer with Will, because Will's known about the magic since they were small boys and in any case he's oblivious to odd things happening unless they're huge enough to blow the roof off the house.

Merlin doesn't like wine all that much, or thought he didn't, but this wine at least is good, it's _really_ good. It doesn't have that inky thickness that he dislikes; there's a hint of sweetness that takes the edge off and caresses Merlin's tongue. It's the oak, Lancelot says, and Leon and Arthur make fun of him; it's the _oak_ , Merlin, they say; make sure you can taste the _oak_.

The word reminds Merlin of Arthur asking him to change the seasons, of the little oak twig he brought back to college to make its buds open like a small, secret triumph in the secure space of his rooms; a "yes, Arthur, I _can_ change the seasons".

His magic is moving inside him now, rolling in slow waves like a quiescent sea, and suddenly he realises how much better he knows his magic now, after months of guidance from Professor Gaius. He _knows_ it's not going to pose a problem, knows he'll be able to control it. The knowledge is simply there, quiet and sure. So Merlin allows himself to get drunk for once, lets the room go fuzzy and blurred around him, lets himself relax into the warmth of wine and friendship.

When they start singing Leon declares Merlin’s voice to be the best of them all, "lyrical" he calls it. Arthur looks at Leon and then at Merlin, his mouth stretching into a slow, lopsided smile that is gently mocking and something else that isn't mocking at all but dark and heated, making Merlin's stomach lurch and his heart trip a little in his chest.

His magic still behaves strangely whenever Arthur is around, warm and pliable like an affectionate cat. It twirls and turns, rolls and threads its golden tendrils through his veins. But it's not threatening to escape. It's strong and agile and enjoying itself, purring inside him, and it will stay there, powerful, secret, and not betray him. The magic is his ally, not an enemy that he needs to fight.

When they get hungry Lancelot produces bread and weird French cheeses that smell oddly intimate of sour milk. There's a white cheese with a creamy centre that Merlin thinks smells like semen, and then blushes at the mere word inside his head when he glances at Arthur. _God, Arthur. If I could only... if you would only..._ They eat the bread with lovely runny dark-gold honey that has a slightly bitter aftertaste of thyme. It's a bit like Merlin's magic, he thinks and giggles around his bite of bread as the honey spreads its thick sweetness over his tongue; it's warm and rich and golden with an edge to it.

"Have some water," Leon advises when Merlin gets up to go and have a piss and staggers into a chair that scrapes over the floor until it's caught on the edge of a rug. "Will help you not get drunk so quickly, and you'll be grateful tomorrow."

They've caught on to the fact that he doesn't have much experience with alcohol but they don't tease him too much; they seem rather to enjoy giving him fatherly advice. This particular piece of advice seems sound enough.

Merlin sways as he relieves himself, and when he returns to Lancelot's rooms he stops inside the door and leans against it, taking in the scene before him. The three of them are draped loose-limbed over furniture, the smoke from their cigarettes curling towards the ceiling. He looks at their laughing faces, happy to be part of this, happy to belong here with good people.

His glass has been refilled in his absence and there's a glass of water next to it that he gulps down; Leon thumps him on the shoulder and tells him that that's right, that's it, and they all laugh.

He's never been this drunk before. The room is spinning around him in a slightly alarming fashion, and once or twice he has to bite his tongue to stop himself saying stupid things like telling Arthur how handsome he looks, but he loves it, he loves it all.

His tongue feels too big for his mouth and sort of loose, like a lump of jelly in his mouth; he drinks more water and sprawls in his chair and lets himself be lulled by the dark murmur of voices around him, not really listening to their words but smiling with their laughter. The way people behave when they're drunk says a lot about them, Merlin thinks fuzzily and not for the first time in his life. Alcohol doesn’t make Arthur and his friends mean or aggressive.

Leon and Lancelot are relaxed and boneless and silly, Leon giggles and Lancelot's elbow slips off the table, and Arthur... _Arthur_.

He is radiant, surrounded by the flames that Merlin saw around him from the very first, his blond hair shining and his eyes a little glassy but still laughing blue, and he is so breathtaking that Merlin gulps.

No, he is not afraid that his magic will slip away from him; there is a much greater risk that his love for Arthur will shine through.

The alcohol breaks down watertight compartments in Merlin's mind, and for the first time he is forced to admit to himself in so many words how wildly, insanely in love with Arthur he is. It's madness, he knows; it's like a suicide wish to let himself fall in love with Uther Pendragon's son. But like Arthur had said that day on the frosty hillside, he is not his father, and Merlin loves him so much his body is both heavy and light with it, so much he feels his heartbeat could make the earth quake, that the strength of his emotion could truly make the seasons change and the world tilt on its axis. And then he laughs a little at himself and his delusions of grandeur, and Leon looks at him and turns to Arthur, grinning: "Look at the little one, Arthur. He’s sitting there blushing to himself."

" _Mer_ lin," Arthur says, admonishing and a little pompous, and at that moment he actually does look like his father. Merlin bites the insides of his cheeks at the image of what Arthur could be, what he most likely will be, with all of Uther Pendragon's power but with a very different prime mover. " _Mer_ lin! What on earth are you thinking about, blushing like that? You have to tell us now."

Merlin's blush deepens and he adamantly refuses to tell, even when he is attacked by Arthur and Leon and tickled into a heap on the floor, laughing hysterically and gasping "no, no, please, no". Lancelot only smiles, half asleep.

But when Merlin has recovered and Arthur and Leon have forgotten what the tickle attack was all about, Merlin looks at Arthur. And looks. If he tries to be objective (and his inner voice turns very sarcastic at that), he can see that there are indeed men with strictly more classical looks than Arthur Pendragon, perhaps more traditionally perfect with almond-shaped eyes, straight nose and straight teeth. But something about Arthur sparks Merlin's senses, something about him touches Merlin and tugs at him in a new and irresistible way. Arthur's blue eyes, his aquiline nose and broad, open smile, the way his entire face can light up - it all stirs something so deep inside Merlin that he is almost afraid to touch it, to acknowledge it. Like it's too enormous for him to bear.

***

"Ishouldgo," Merlin slurs and rises unsteadily from the chair. By the door he trips on something, not quite falling over but going down on one knee, his fingertips touching the floor.

When Arthur laughs at him the entire rooms spins, and he jumps at the chance. "You'll need someone to escort you down the stairs!" he says too loudly, getting up off Lancelot's sofa. He turns and sways as he announces to the others: "I'm taking the little one back to his rooms. Someone needs to make sure he doesn't break his neck on the stairs."

It sounds good in his head, anyway.

No one takes any notice of him. Lancelot has fallen asleep in his chair with his mouth half-open; Leon is on his back on the floor explaining something to the ceiling. As Merlin scrambles back onto his feet Arthur crashes into him and nearly makes him fall over again. He throws an arm around Merlin's shoulders as they fumble the door open and stagger out, laughing, to negotiate the stairs.

Their faces are close, and twice Arthur's forehead comes to rest briefly on Merlin's temple. While one of Merlin's hands slides down the handrail, the other sneaks around Arthur's waist and clutches at his clothes. Arthur is grinning like a lunatic, unable to stop himself, heady and bold with warmth and closeness. The wine sings in his head and thuds in his ears, putting pressure behind his eyes.

It's a small miracle that they reach the foot of the stairs without falling. When Merlin fishes his keys out of his pocket they slip from his hand, and they both drop to their knees on the floor, giggling, to pick them up. Their hands meet over the bunch of keys.

"Jus'like the first time," Merlin slurs. "Jus'like when we met."

Arthur giggles, then stills, trying to focus on Merlin's face. It swims under the light and looks eerily otherworldly.

"Le Morte d'Arthur," he blurts out, simply because it pops up in his alcohol-soaked brain and most of his filters are shot to hell.

Merlin smiles at him, a very drunken and soft smile that takes Arthur’s breath away. "No, not yet," he says quietly. "Not in a looong time yet."

And then they somehow get back on their feet and Merlin unlocks the door. Arthur holds it open for Merlin to step inside, and pulls it almost shut behind them. He is about to say something when Merlin turns abruptly, and they're so close that Arthur draws a breath. His vision is floating, filled with white skin, dark hair, dark eyelashes. The back of Merlin's hand touches Arthur's.

"I – " Arthur begins shakily, but Merlin leans forward, intentionally or just because he's swaying, until his breath is on Arthur's lips and his mouth brushes against Arthur's in a kind of light, gentle slide.

It happens so quickly that it barely registers in Arthur's blurry brain until it's over, and even as he makes a startled sound he isn’t sure that Merlin actually meant to do what he did.

But then there's Merlin's reaction. He steps back, away from Arthur, and they stare at one another wide-eyed and confused. The room is silent and something crosses Merlin's face like a shadow. His jaw tenses as he reaches past Arthur in a quick, surprisingly sober move to push the door open. Then his hands are on Arthur, his palms against Arthur's chest, as he gives him a hard shove out the doorway. Arthur takes a few flailing steps backwards and lands sprawling on his arse on the flagstones, blinking in astonishment and pain while the court reverberates with the sound of Merlin's door slammed shut and the bolt shot home.

Arthur remains on the cold paving for a minute, trying to understand what happened. He shakes his head to make the fog clear but only makes himself dizzy. Merlin's door is heavy and silent, closed, so closed, and Arthur can't stand it. He gets back on his feet and starts to pound on the door with his fists, willing it to yield, to open so he can take Merlin by the collar and walk him back into the room. It hurts; he must have scraped his palms when he fell. He wipes them on his trousers and bangs on the door again.

"Merlin, what the hell...?" he yells. "Open the door! _Merlin!_ "

A couple of undergrads at the other end of the colonnade stop to point and look at him, laughing, but Arthur ignores them. There's not a sound from Merlin. The silence is as heavy and dead as before, and after a few more minutes Arthur admits defeat and pulls himself away from the door. Swaying and muttering, he wanders back to his own rooms, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. His palms still sting, but the sting of having been shut out is worse.

He tumbles into bed, head spinning, falling asleep in a whirl of Merlin, his eyes, his mouth... his hands shoving Arthur out the door.

***

Arthur spends next day in bed with a headache and the curtains drawn, dozing, sleeping, waking to drink water. Merlin weaves in and out of his dreams. Sometimes Merlin is towering over him, powerful and menacing, with his eyes glowing and unintelligible words spilling over his lips. He is cloaked in darkness, his force is frightening, hidden but undeniable. At other times there are glimpses of a Merlin who is achingly happy, laughing up at Arthur with his eyes sparkling blue in the sun.

Arthur jerks awake just as he leans down, slowly and full of intention, to kiss Merlin’s smiling mouth.

***

Groaning, Merlin fights his way out of sleep into the room and immediately wishes he hadn't. His head aches, his mouth is like parchment and the contrast between last night's euphoria and _this_ makes him want to sob. He wants it back, how everything was pleasantly blurred around the edges, the soft, dark rumble of voices - and Arthur, radiantly laughing.

Arthur's been in a league all his own ever since Merlin first set eyes on him. It's as though he can _feel_ Arthur, not just in his presence but even when Arthur isn't physically there - it’s like a glow, a luminous haze at the edge of his mind. Like he can feel Arthur's very existence. And when Arthur is present, the sensation is sometimes overwhelming and makes Merlin do stupid things.

Like last night.

He groans with headache and the deeper ache of shame as he squeezes his eyes shut against what little light there is, clenching his fists. However drunk he was last night, he remembers everything clearly, remembers that heart-stopping moment inside the door when they were so close and Merlin couldn't stop his mouth from brushing against Arthur's - and then shoved him out in a panic, making the whole thing infinitely worse.

Because Merlin isn't sure whether Arthur, even drunker than Merlin, even noticed the near-kiss, and now Merlin will have to explain himself.

He groans again and rolls over to bury his face in the pillow, keening with embarrassment, shame stinging his eyes. What _in hell_ can he tell Arthur?

***

When Arthur finally gets up and makes coffee it's half past five and already dark. He washes and dresses and decides he'll feel much better with a proper meal inside him, something greasy and filling.

But first he must talk to Merlin, talk to him and find out – how, he has no idea – whether Merlin intended for that strange, breathy almost-kiss last night to happen.

He takes a deep breath in front of the mirror and meets his own eyes in it, dark blue and purposeful - very like his father's, he notices with a frown. He squares his shoulders and adjusts his tie, making a decision. _I'll go over and knock on Merlin's door and make sure he damn well opens this time. And then I'll take it from there._

There is a fine drizzle in the air when he crosses the court, cold and somehow wetter than proper rain, making the paving slippery under his feet. Merlin's door looks ominous, grim and silent, and Arthur's hand is shaking a little with nerves or residual hangover when he raises it to knock. It takes a while for Merlin to open, but he does open, looking a bit worse for wear - bad enough that Arthur wonders if he has slept at all. He is even paler than usual with dark circles under his eyes and the hollows beneath his cheekbones more pronounced. His gaze grazes Arthur's and drops to the floor.

"Can I come in?" Arthur asks quietly, leaning forward to catch Merlin's eyes.

Merlin shrugs and steps aside, half turned away. He is in shirtsleeves and waistcoat and the room is dark and stuffy, the air filled with the sickly and sharp, slightly acetonic smell of hangover.

"Are you all right?" Arthur isn't going to let him get away with silence.

Merlin shrugs again.

"Nauseous this morning, little one?" A bit of teasing is good.

"A bit. Not any more." His voice is low and rough, sending a shiver down Arthur's spine. "I only got up an hour ago."

"You look like you need a square meal," Arthur says. "God knows I do."

When Merlin shrugs for the third time, Arthur wants to shake him.

"Come on, Merlin," he coaxes. "Let's get out of here, get dinner somewhere. I'm buying."

"I can't let you do that," Merlin murmurs, his eyes still downcast and his fingers picking restlessly at the hem of his waistcoat.

"Don't be ridiculous. Get your jacket." Arthur uses his sharp, no-nonsense voice this time, and hears himself sounding just like his father. He swallows and lets it go – for now. (He needs to do something about this, before he _becomes_ his father. He _never_ wants to become his father.)

Merlin is very quiet until they are seated at a white-linen table and Arthur asks if he wants a beer. Then he laughs, and Arthur feels like the whole room just brightened.

"If you'd asked me that a few hours ago I'd have said I'd never drink again in my life. But yeah, I'd actually like a beer."

Conversation flows a little easier after that, as if the beer was the drop of oil needed in their machinery. _Aviation metaphor_ , Arthur thinks and grins.

"I'll walk you to your rooms," he says to Merlin when they pass through the gates into college.

"You don't have to do that." Merlin looks equally annoyed and amused. "I'm not a... a _damsel_."

Arthur snorts. "Aren't you, Merlin? You're quite sure?"

Teasing Merlin is wonderful; it's instant gratification. It takes so little to make him blush, either with embarrassment or annoyance. This time it's the latter, but as Merlin is clearly repressing a grin it can't be too bad.

"Shut up, Arthur. You're not the knight in shining armour that you think you are."

Arthur takes a step back, presses a hand to his heart and makes a sad, put-upon face with his bottom lip protruding. "Aren't I? And here I thought... What _is_ the matter with young people these days? Here I am on my gallant steed, galloping to the damsel's aid when she's hung over, taking her out to dinner to put some colour in her cheeks, and... She ought to _adore_ me. Why doesn't she adore me?"

To his astonishment, that comment truly does put colour in Merlin's cheeks, deeper than before. He bows his head to hide it, but before Arthur can begin to tease in earnest they've reached Merlin's door, and Arthur can't have it slammed in his face again. He _must_ talk to Merlin about that kiss-or-not-kiss last night or it will become a spectre, it will grow enormous and block the view. So when Merlin unlocks the door Arthur pushes it open and steps in before Merlin, shuts it firmly behind them and leans on it, both for support and to cut off Merlin's path of retreat.

Merlin sees it in his face, he can tell, that Arthur won't let him get away with it. He makes himself taller, consciously or not, to face the challenge straight on. Arthur wants to smile in appreciation of Merlin's bravery but he is too nervous.

"About last night," he begins, but Merlin holds up a hand with the palm out.

"I know," he says. "I know what you're going to say. I've been meaning to apologise all evening. Look, I was very, _very_ drunk, and I'm not used to it. I didn't really know what.. what I was doing." He takes a deep breath and makes a comical, self-deprecating face. "Thank you for not making a big thing out of it," he adds.

It sounds rehearsed, like he's been thinking all day about what to say and now it comes spilling out. Arthur is aware of staring at Merlin's mouth but can't tear his gaze away.

Merlin is standing a good distance away, creating a safety zone between them, but who is he protecting, Arthur or himself? Arthur's heart is hammering, slamming the blood through his veins; sweat is breaking out along his hairline and down his back.

"But it _is_ a big thing," he hears himself say miles away. "Merlin..." No, he sounds pleading; he doesn't want to plead so he starts again: "I have to get this straight or it'll do my head in. I'm sorry for being blunt, but... was I imagining things, or did you almost kiss me? I mean," he adds when Merlin visibly blanches, "you could've, I don't know, tripped." He laughs, wondering if Merlin thinks Arthur is trying to hand him an excuse, offering him a way out. "We _were_ very drunk, I know, but from your very carefully rehearsed apology just now, I gather that you didn't trip or slip or anything of the kind. It _was_ intentional, wasn’t it?"

If Merlin went white before, he's back to crimson now, mortified. But Arthur can no longer imagine a state, or a world, or a plane of existence, where Merlin isn't beautiful in whatever he does, in every single moment.

 _I'm lost,_ he thinks and wants to laugh - or cry, perhaps, from nerves and insecurity, but it doesn't matter that he’s lost. For one moment, it doesn't matter at all. It's like free-falling. He just jumped off a cliff and now he’s flying and doesn't care if the rocks are jagged where he lands.

“I thought about it all day," he says, too intense but no longer caring about propriety, "about _you_ , about you doing that, and I... I wanted to... I _hoped_ it was intentional."

The silence that follows is so heavy it puts pressure on his eardrums. His heart is wild in his chest. He can't look at Merlin’s face so he looks at his neck instead, at the movement of his Adam's apple above the collar when he swallows with a faint click. And then Merlin takes a step forward.

Arthur stands there paralysed, staring at Merlin's neck and thinking three things at once: that it's the first time he has so much as hinted of his perversion to anyone. That at this moment it doesn't feel like a perversion at all. That Merlin is very, very close.

He lifts his eyes and watches the lamp outline Merlin's hair with gold.

"Well," Merlin says and his voice is only just above a whisper, "if that's the case... if you hoped it was a kiss... then I'm going to do it again."

Almost before the words are out, before Arthur has even taken a breath, he feels Merlin's hands on his face. Arthur's pulse pounds in his temples, in his fingertips, between his legs; he is half turned on and half frightened, but Merlin's mouth meets his with gentleness. His own hands don't know what to do with themselves and he flattens them against the door, helplessly. But when Merlin's tongue teases his lips apart and slips into his mouth, his hands scrabble over Merlin’s waist to clutch at his shirt underneath the jacket and pull him closer, closer. Arthur hears himself make a small noise that is nearly a moan, undignified, unstoppable.

Merlin is pressed against him chest to knee, warm and wiry and overwhelming, and when Arthur's hips push forward of their own accord there's a hungry, startled sound from the back of Merlin's throat.

"Arthur," Merlin breathes, " _Arthur_."

He leans his forehead against Arthur's and Arthur trembles at the heat of Merlin’s body, dizzy with danger and possibility.

He needs to see Merlin's face and switches them around so it's Merlin with his back against the door. Merlin's eyes are wide and dark, the Byzantine saint, but no, this is no saint, and Arthur is glad of that. He smiles and presses his lips to Merlin's jawbone, slides his mouth down Merlin's neck to the edge of the collar and up to his earlobe that he touches with his tongue. There is the strangled noise again and Arthur realises Merlin is shaking. In a kind of vertigo he begins to kiss Merlin everywhere he can find bare skin - nose, eyelids, cheekbones, chin, mouth, neck - and Merlin is gasping and laughing, threading his fingers into Arthur's hair.

Arthur's head is swimming with the knowledge that Merlin welcomes this, _wants_ Arthur’s hands on his body and their mouths pressed together.

"God, Merlin," he breathes, pushing Merlin's hair out of his eyes. "I've wanted to... you have no idea..."

Merlin's eyes are huge. "Remember when I dropped all the books?" he says in a half-whisper. "I've wanted to do this - " he leans forward and _licks_ at Arthur's neck, and Arthur's body responds with a shock of pleasure, "I've wanted to do this ever since. No, before that. Since the first time I saw you."

"Oh god," Arthur says shakily, pulling him back in, "me too. Your _mouth_ , Merlin. I need your mouth."

Merlin moans at that and they're kissing again, a different kiss that settles something between them, or just in Arthur's head.

"Stay with me tonight," Merlin says against the corner of Arthur's mouth while his fingers are counting Arthur's ribs through the shirt, "stay with me."

Nothing could have made Arthur leave Merlin's rooms that night. He will remember it always, what Merlin's skin looked like in the light from the fire, what Merlin's hands and mouth did to him and what Merlin allowed him to do in turn, what it was like to be _home_ and happy, weak and delirious with love.

***

Merlin's rooms will never feel the same again, he thinks. They have changed like he has changed, they are warm like he is warm, they have been through an initiation rite like he has. His magic is alive in him, pulsing, glowing, and he remembers Professor Gaius' words about a deeper reason for his being here.

He turns his head and looks at Arthur's sleeping face that he can only just make out in the grey light of dawn. He has no idea where this will take them, but right this moment it doesn't matter, because they are here and this is where it begins.

***

 _Dear god, I'm truly obsessed,_ Arthur thinks. He is watching Merlin read, take notes and push his fingers through his hair until he resembles a preoccupied hedgehog, thinking it's the most endearing thing he's ever seen.

Arthur's world these days is made up of Merlin, every minute saturated with him. He dreams of Merlin, thinks of him, knocks on his door at all hours of the day and spends an inordinate amount of time with his mouth against Merlin's skin, against Merlin's mouth. In a very short time they have reached a level of intimacy Arthur has only touched on in his most secret dreams. Nothing needs to be hidden in shame.

Only this morning he watched Merlin's face under him, open-mouthed and slack with pleasure as Arthur slowly entered his body. Arthur had been shaking with it, with lust and greed and withheld emotion, until Merlin had told him to _fucking move_ and he had, hard, until they had both been muffling their cries in the other's neck and shoulder.

Merlin looks up from his book and smiles, and everything else melts away from Arthur's field of vision.

***

Merlin loves watching Arthur shave.

He watches from across the room now, watches Arthur by the washstand, naked to the waist with the lower half of his face eerily white with lather. There is too much distance between them; he needs to _touch_.

He crosses the room and puts his hands on Arthur's shoulders; his mouth meets the back of Arthur's neck and the tip of his tongue traces the hairline. Arthur lets out a gasp.

"Christ, Merlin! Are you trying to make me cut my throat?"

Merlin gives a startled shudder and meets Arthur's eyes in the mirror. "Don't even joke about things like that," he says.

"Then don't _do_ things like that - not when I have a razor in my hand. Oh, no, don't stop... god, your mouth... a man could cut his throat for less."

"Shh," Merlin hushes, chuckling, sliding his fingers over Arthur's chest and down his arms. "You're talking too much. And contradicting yourself."

Arthur looks odd in the mirror; his smile is a little lopsided and one eye a fraction smaller than the other, differently shaped. Merlin never notices that when they look at each other face to face.

Arthur stands with the razor poised, still locking eyes with Merlin as he twists his mouth to the side to stretch the skin taut. The blade makes an elegant swipe through the lather on Arthur's cheek, leaving a swathe of pink behind, and Merlin feels the movement of muscle under his fingers.

The moment of vertigo is sudden and so intense that his heart nearly stops. There's something about the razor, about the glint of metal against Arthur's skin that reminds Merlin of something he can't grasp, a flash of memory and recognition like a bright stab through his mind. The crash of metal, Merlin's fingers tightening buckles and straps on Arthur's forearms and shoulders... and then it's gone.

Arthur's hand with the razor is frozen in mid-air and his eyes are worried and very blue. "What is it? Are you all right?"

"I... I don't know." Merlin swallows, watching his hands on Arthur's shoulders as if they don't belong to him. They're trembling. He lets them fall.

He is still dizzy as he crosses the floor to sink into one of the armchairs by the fire. Those fragmented images, he thinks; they were just like the ones he sees in his dreams, only this time he was awake and they were more like... memories. But it can't be. He is imagining things. Arthur plops down beside him, still naked to the waist with his braces in loops down his thighs, drying his face on a linen towel.

"Are you all right?" he asks again, wiping some stray lather from his earlobe.

Merlin takes a deep breath and nods, even manages a smile. But the dizziness doesn't leave.

***

Arthur loves making Merlin laugh. Most of the time there is something so guarded about Merlin, even in bed, in a situation where he should truly give himself up, that Arthur loves it when Merlin forgets himself and just laughs. His eyes disappear in crinkles and his pretty teeth show, and Arthur could do and say any number of exceedingly silly things just to see that, just to hear the sound.

The feeling that Merlin is holding something back grows stronger. For one thing, he never wants to talk about his paintings, evading the subject if Arthur brings it up. Some mornings he has paint-stained fingers and looks like death, replying curtly to Arthur's questions: "I didn't sleep well." And Arthur doesn't even know if he paints when he can't sleep or if painting gets in the way of sleep.

Arthur remembers this as one of the first things he noticed about Merlin: that his eyes were holding a secret. The observation is still valid. The secret has not been shared. Back then, Arthur had thought Merlin _wanted_ to share, couldn't wait to. Now, he wonders what it would take for that to happen.

"Do you hide things from me, Merlin?" he asks.

He hopes the urgency of the question doesn't come across; obscures it by kissing his way slowly down Merlin's spine, counting vertebrae, his fingertips raising goosebumps over Merlin's ticklish ribs. He loves Merlin's skin. If he could lie here touching it with mouth and fingers forever, he'd be happy. He _is_ happy.

"Everyone has secrets," Merlin replies softly, turning around in Arthur's arms to comb his fingers through Arthur's hair from the crown to the nape and then back up, stroking him backwards.

It's not the answer Arthur wants. He tries to catch the look in Merlin's eyes but the long eyelashes are dark crescents smudged over Merlin's cheeks as he traces the outline of Arthur's jaw with a finger, down the neck and along the collarbone to the point of the shoulder.

"I want to hear yours," Arthur says, and there's something dangerously hot and tight in his chest. "All of them. Are you scared to tell me?" A pause. "Embarrassed to?"

Merlin meets his eyes then.

"You're Arthur Pendragon," he says, and the corner of his mouth lifts in half a smile.

As if that is an explanation, as if that is an answer. Anger flares up.

"Thank you for that clarification," Arthur says hotly, his voice clamped tight around the hurt. "And you're Merlin Emrys, and most of the time I don't know who the fuck he is."

Merlin winces and blinks before his eyelashes come sweeping down again as he draws a slow line down Arthur's sternum with a fingertip.

"Do you have secrets from me, Arthur Pendragon?" he asks.

For a mad second, Arthur thinks he can _see_ Merlin's voice like a thread of gold in the dusk of the room. He shakes his head, both to clear it and to deny any secrets.

"The only thing," he says a little unsteadily, "the only thing I hide from you... sometimes..."

He swallows and Merlin looks up at him.

"Yes?" he urges gently when Arthur hesitates.

"Sometimes I want to tell you that I love you," Arthur murmurs, "sometimes I want to tell you just how much. But I'm scared _you'll_ be scared. That you'll run away if I do."

Silence falls heavy, charged with emotion and unsaid things, until Merlin leans in to kiss Arthur's mouth, his breath touching Arthur before his lips do. It's the softest kiss Arthur has ever received.

For a moment he dreads Merlin's verbal response, afraid he'll be handed an automatic phrase, that Merlin will give him a cliché because it's expected – _I'd never run from you, Arthur_ , or even _I love you too_. But Merlin doesn't say anything. Instead he kisses his reply into Arthur's mouth, his temple, his neck, and later fucks it into Arthur's body until Arthur knows he can't doubt Merlin's willingness, can't doubt Merlin's love.

***

Sex is not so different from magic, Merlin thinks sleepily with his head cushioned on Arthur's arm. It's natural and simple, intuitive and infinitely complex.

When he reaches up to kiss Arthur's temple, Arthur smiles in his sleep.

***

The Dragonfly vibrates and roars, responding to Arthur's slightest move and spitting oil all over his face. He is laughing to himself, whooping and shouting wordlessly into the wind, licking oil from his lips. Below him the countryside is spread out like a brown and green quilt, threaded with silver and blue, dotted with red. The sky is a vault of glass.

He turns and watches the world tilt under him. This is fathomable, measurable, calculable. Merlin is none of that and Arthur needs to clear his head, to let the cold air wash every thought and emotion away so he can appreciate them all the more when they return.

The landing is less than elegant but Arthur doesn't care. He leaves the Dragonfly in Jack's competent hands and begs a lift back to Cambridge, where his world is once again inundated with Merlin, all lush mouth and hot eyes.

***

"We have to be careful, Merlin," Arthur says as he puts on his tie and Merlin straightens it for him, kissing the tip of his chin when he is done. "We spend so much time together - we can't let people guess. It's dangerous. Think of Oscar Wilde. Never quite himself again after Reading, was he?"

"No," Merlin agrees quietly, letting his fingertips slide down the tie before he looks up.

Arthur sighs and pulls Merlin close; Merlin settles against his chest. "I hate having to hide," he says.

"So do I," Merlin murmurs with feeling. "So do I, Arthur. You have no idea."

"I love you." Arthur kisses Merlin's hair. "I'd like to shout it from the rooftops, you know that, but... I can't. We can't."

"I know."

"It would ruin us."

"I know."

Merlin's breath is warm against Arthur's neck and it's enough because it has to be. There's nothing more to say.

***

They're spilled all over Arthur's bed, sprawling under and over and across each other in a tangle of limbs and slickness. Merlin raises himself on an elbow and touches Arthur's face, fingertips smoothing the damp hair from Arthur's forehead and tracing the arcs of Arthur's eyebrows like he's drawing them. He'll never get used to this, he thinks; to being allowed to see Arthur like this. He doesn't _want_ to get used to it.

Arthur lifts his head from the pillow and kisses the only part of Merlin his mouth can reach; the inside of his wrist.

"Merlin," he says, his head falling back on the pillow.

Outside the dusk is fragile and blue. The window is ajar and they can hear the rain as it begins to fall.

"Mm?"

"I'd like you to come with me when I go home for Easter."

Merlin stills. Arthur is looking up at him, but it seems to take an effort to hold his gaze steady. After a heartbeat he pulls Merlin's head down to him and kisses his mouth.

"Don't worry," he murmurs, "it will only be us. Father will be in London and Morgana is visiting a friend. Just you and me and the servants."

"The _servants_ ", Merlin huffs against Arthur's cheekbone, but there's no antagonism in his voice.

"We can stay in bed all day, like this. God, Merlin," and Arthur's hand slides down to rest on the curve of Merlin's arse, "I want to hear you _make noise_ ; I want you to come so hard you _scream_. I'm tired of always having to hide ourselves, muffling ourselves in pillows."

Merlin drags his mouth down Arthur's cheek and jaw to his neck, parting his lips to suck at the skin until Arthur moans. "I'm tired of it, too," he says.

The vision of the two of them fucking each other's brains out in whatever obscenely large bed Arthur has in his room at home - a four-poster, probably - makes his cock stir despite the quite spectacular orgasm Arthur gave him five minutes ago. For a moment he allows himself to indulge in the fantasy. But if they go to Arthur's home, if they _do_ do all of those things and Merlin lets himself go completely, he won't be able to keep his magic in check - and to let his magic loose in Uther Pendragon’s house would be more than stupid. It would be disastrous.

"Merlin?" Arthur is pushing at him to lift his head.

"Arthur, I - "

Arthur is looking at him and it takes all his willpower not to look away first.

"You don't want to," Arthur says. It's a statement, dry and flat, but Merlin senses the disappointment and hurt behind it.

"No," he protests, "I do. I do want to. It's just..."

There's nothing he can say that will not sound like a lie - like the lie it is, and has to be.

"It's just that I'm me and my father is Uther Pendragon." Another statement, and it pains Merlin to see Arthur's eyes this dark.

"Yes," he concedes, and even if it's only half a truth, there's at least _some_ truth.

"Or...?" Arthur's eyes are still searching his. "Is there... Merlin, is there someone...? Someone you want to go home to over the break?"

The tension in his voice is testimony of what it costs him to say it, and the realisation that Arthur _doubts_ him, that he isn't sure of Merlin's feelings for him, pierces Merlin like the lance he dreamed of last night.

"No," he says, struggling out of Arthur's arms to sit up. "No! How can you even... there isn't anyone else, Arthur! Don't _ever_ think there is." Freya's face surfaces in his mind for a fraction of a second, accusing and hurt, and then sinks back into the dark.

Arthur has closed his eyes.

"No," says Merlin again, softly this time, and leans down to kiss Arthur's eyelids. "I just... I just can't. Not yet. One day," and he cups his hand around Arthur's jaw and kisses his mouth, "one day I'll tell you why."

Arthur opens his eyes. "One day you'll tell me everything," he says.


	4. Between Hammers

_Our heart exists between hammers_

 

"Father wants me to go into politics," Arthur writes to Merlin as the summer heat brings London near melting point. "It is nothing new, of course - he always said that was his intention, and that is why I was sent to Cambridge to study law rather than art history, which would have been my choice (had I had one) - but this is where he believes everything is falling into place for me. I have an aptitude for political life, he claims, and where he gets that idea I do not know. For once he seems pleased with me; an occurrence so rare as to make me nonplussed. Perhaps I am reading the signs wrong - and Merlin, if "aptitude" means that he believes my political creed to be the same as his own, should I not be offended rather than flattered?

It is true, however, that I seemed to impress the French ambassador favourably at a reception yesterday - or could it be that I was in tails and had rather a lot of champagne that made my cheeks blush and my youthful eyes sparkle, and he is fond of, shall we say conversant young men? Or promising, perhaps? Can you picture me, Merlin?"

Arthur puts the pen aside and leans back in the chair, rubbing his hands over his face. His sleeves are rolled up and his hair is damp; the air in the room doesn't stir despite both windows being open. The tone of his letter is humorous, but he feels depressed - he is not cut out for politics. Uther sees what he wants to see; he wants confirmation that he made the right choice in sending Arthur to Cambridge to study for the bar. And yesterday's reception was rather - humiliating is a strong word, but Arthur senses he was put on display, that Uther wanted for someone to notice Arthur and offer to take him under his wing. _This, gentlemen, is my handsome son, a Cambridge law student who needs to refine his political thinking..._

Arthur shudders in the heat and pushes the memory out of his head, replacing it with the image of Merlin's face.

He sits up straight and picks up the pen. Time to stop pretending.

"I miss you.

I miss the constellation of freckles on your left cheekbone. I miss the little crease between your mouth and chin, the one you have to straighten out with your fingers when you shave. I want to put my tongue there. I want to kiss the little dip below your bottom lip until you are half-crazed with frustration from almost being kissed on the mouth. I want to see that dimple appear below the corner of your mouth, the one that says "kiss here".

I'm sorry, Merlin; I seem to be in a soppy mood tonight. As I can't do what I would love to do, I am kissing the letter instead, here:

XXX

And when you have kissed the same spot, please burn the letter."

***

 _Of course I can picture you,_ Merlin thinks as he reads. He can see Arthur cut a dashing figure at the Embassy reception, all charm and smiles and golden hair, taking some sequin-covered old dragon's hand and touching his lips to her knuckles to please his father and the dragon's ~~keeper~~ husband. He has no trouble imagining Arthur in crisp, immaculate black and white with a champagne flute in his hand, throwing back his head in laughter at the particularly juicy story a colleague of Uther's is regaling them with.

When Merlin reads the last part of the letter, he closes his eyes and sighs, imagining Arthur's mouth on his skin. He misses Arthur so much it aches.

 _September,_ he thinks, touching his lips to the sheet of paper, _we'll see each other in September._

And then he burns the letter.

***

The heat is relentless as they work in the fields; the sun burns their shoulders and makes the air shimmer. It's only marginally cooler as Merlin heads back from the farm in the evening. He washes off the day's sweat and dust in the scullery and takes the mug of ale from Hunith gratefully. She is setting supper on the table when Freya comes rushing through the door.

"Have you heard?" she says, dark-eyed and frightened. "We're at war - we're at war with Germany."

Hunith pushes a damp strand of hair from her forehead and straightens her back, resting her fists on her hips. None of them finds anything to say. The clock ticks on the mantelpiece; a cricket lands on the window-ledge and begins to chirp.

When Freya leaves, Hunith sinks down on her chair and reaches for Merlin's hand.

"Don't volunteer," she says. "I know you young men find war exciting, but... please, Merlin. Don't."

He leans over and kisses her cheek. She smells of sun on skin and faintly of sweat.

"I'll go when I have to,” he says, "but not before."

***

It's a relief to be back at Cambridge. Reassuring. They're at war but the university buildings have stood for centuries and will continue to stand, and Merlin buries himself in words and Arthur.

Arthur is quieter these days, reads even more newspapers than usual, and occasionally talks to his father on the telephone. He is not distant, exactly; the change in him is not detachment as he seems to care about Merlin as deeply as ever, but he seems preoccupied with things he doesn't discuss with Merlin. Something has wedged itself in between them, something that was not there before. Merlin gradually withdraws, expecting Arthur to follow, to tease and coax and ask what's wrong, but when he doesn't, Merlin keeps the new distance. He has plenty of work to immerse himself in.

When Arthur asks Merlin to come out with him in Leon's motorcar, Merlin's heart leaps in his chest and he sets his books aside in a hurry. Even if it's only temporary, this is a long-awaited return to normal, to Arthur and Merlin as they were before.

They go to the oak on the hilltop, one of their favourite spots. The sun filters down through the canopy to bathe them in dappled light. Merlin sits with his back against the trunk, feeling the heartbeat of the old tree slowing down in preparation for winter. It's late September and one of the last warm days that can be expected, one of those days that pretend nothing is going to happen, nothing will change. Arthur has his head in Merlin's lap; Merlin combs his fingers through the blond hair again and again in a sleepy, hypnotic rhythm. Though the grass still smells of summer there's an undercurrent of death and decay. For a moment it all connects absolutely in Merlin's head, a single moment of clarity when everything is one and every stage logically leads to the next. Grass, sun, straw, earth, death; their young bodies rejoicing, ageing, being returned to earth.

Arthur sits up abruptly and Merlin is pulled back to the present. He makes a small noise of protest; his lap feels empty and cold without the warm weight of Arthur's head and his fingers want to continue to slide through silky hair. But Arthur doesn't grin or make a face or lean over to kiss him, doesn't even look at him. Instead he sits with his head bent and pulls up blades of grass around him, viciously, as if they offend him. Merlin watches his profile against hills and sky and trees, watches his strong, beautiful hands as they maul the grass. There's something ominous about Arthur's position, in the tension of his back and his downcast eyes, the muscle working in his jaw.

Merlin looks at him and sees fire; he watches him and sees flames.

"Merlin," Arthur says at last, pulling up a few last blades of grass and tossing them aside before he looks up. "Merlin, I'm going to enlist."

For a moment Merlin thinks he'll pass out; the world goes so still and silent around him. He has dreaded this moment. Ever since the beginning of the term he has known, because Arthur has been so different, but now that it's here he refuses to accept it.

"No," he says like the word is pulled out of him, a hook sunk painfully inside. "Arthur, _no_. Please."

Arthur looks away, looks out over the brown fields where the grain sleeps, awaiting spring.

"I want to do it now, while I still have a choice," he says, facing away so Merlin can barely hear him. "Sooner or later we'll all be conscripted, and I..." He turns back to face Merlin. "I know how to fly planes, Merlin. I can be of use."

"Your country needs you?" Merlin hadn't intended it to come out so sarcastically, so scathingly, but Arthur doesn't flare up. He only looks sad. And all at once Merlin understands that Arthur's mind will not be changed whatever Merlin says or does, for this is the kind of sadness that follows a difficult decision, when there is nothing left but to face what you have to face.

"It does," says Arthur simply.

His hands fall down at his sides and Merlin wants to shout at him: Why do you feel you have to save everyone? Why do you feel it's _your_ responsibility?

But he doesn't, because he loves Arthur for it, and besides, Arthur is right. It's everyone's responsibility to have this madness end as quickly as possible. He still hates the necessity, hates the panic in his chest, hates the fact that Arthur will be taken from him, that Arthur will allow it to happen, and then he hates himself for being selfish. _But I can’t bear to lose him,_ he thinks numbly.

Without another word he gets up from the grass and walks down the hill. When Arthur calls after him, he breaks into a run.

A mile or so down the road, Arthur pulls up next to him in the motorcar. Merlin gets in without a glance at Arthur, and they drive back in silence.

***

The world seems to have lost its colour. The leaves are turning but Merlin doesn't see them, only sees the loss of Arthur and his own loneliness. His dreams have returned, hot and red, filled with dust and fire. Even painting them doesn't silence the roar of them in his head. The only thing that feels real is Arthur's body against his own, the two of them moving in and against each other, skin to skin, the wetness of mouths and tears and the relief of tension. Everything they do has an undercurrent of sadness and inevitability.

Arthur will be leaving in a week. The thought makes Merlin want to be sick.

They lie side by side in Arthur's bed, Arthur with his arms under his head, looking up at the ceiling. The curtains are drawn to shut out the autumn darkness.

"Before you leave," Merlin says, memorising the crease at the crook of Arthur's arm and the droplets of sweat on his neck, "I'd like something of yours." His voice is shaking.

"Anything," Arthur replies. He sounds strangled. "Name it and it's yours."

"I'd like one of your undershirts."

Without a word, Arthur gets up off the bed and pulls a drawer open, but Merlin follows and stops him with a hand on his wrist.

"An unwashed one," he says, seeking Arthur's eyes, "one that you've worn. So it smells of you."

A heartbeat.

"Merlin," Arthur whispers, and then Merlin's back is pressed against the wall and they're kissing as if the kiss is air and they would drown without it.

"Don't leave," Merlin pleads. "Arthur, please. You can still change your mind."

"No, I can't. Merlin, look at me." Arthur holds Merlin's face in his hands. "I have to do this. I won't let myself be shot down; I promise you. I'm too good a pilot for that."

Merlin wants to punch him in the face. He swallows tears and kisses Arthur again.

***

Cambridge is empty. Bicycles are still clattering over cobblestones, there are lectures to attend, the library is filled with books to be read and there's sunshine and church bells and beautiful buildings. In the middle of it all there's Merlin, inhabiting a ghost world, indistinct and grey, where he is the only one living.

***

"You can sense the structure of things, can't you," Professor Gaius says. "How they grow. The fabric of them."

He is right. Merlin can reach out of himself, stretch his magic to feel the texture of earth or rock, to feel a tree grow or a river run, all the nerves of a leaf as it trembles. People are hazier and more complex, but he can feel them, too; pain, fury, ecstasy, death. He can still see Arthur like a luminous blur at the edge of his mind.

"Yes," he says, simply. "I can _be_ other things. I _know_ them. But I can't change them."

"Not yet, perhaps. But you will. You are one of the few who could truly make things change, Merlin. Literally or in a more abstract sense." Professor Gaius’ voice is warm. "What about... time?" he adds after a pause. He sounds hesitant, almost a little wary.

Merlin turns away sharply; he doesn't want to discuss time.

It frightens him, frightens him enough to want to push even the thought of it away. Waves of time come crashing in over him when he lowers his guard, when he dreams; waves of age and existence that he is scared to try to understand. Time is thick and slow or spins so fast it makes him dizzy, seconds and millennia harboured inside him as his heart beats to measure them. No, he doesn't want to think about time. One day it will catch up with him, and then he'll drown.

***

Merlin tries to write to Arthur from the train as he travels home for Christmas, with a futile wish to make it a tradition, but all he can think about is Arthur in a world of roaring engines and thumping guns, a world of adrenaline and destruction that Merlin knows nothing about.

The house is suffocatingly small. Merlin's restlessness grows, itching in his legs, and there's not even room to pace.

After breakfast on Christmas Eve he decides to take a walk in the woods. December is unusually cold this year and there's snow on the ground, an inch perhaps, not enough to cover the straggly grass that pokes up rebelliously through the blanket of white. Merlin's footprints are a rope of dark pearls trailing in the snow behind him. No chance of hiding, he thinks, of going anywhere unnoticed. For a moment he considers using magic to vanish the prints, but then scoffs. He's being ridiculous. Who would follow him, and what would it matter if they did?

He lifts the latch of the gate and passes through, closing it meticulously behind him before starting out on the narrow path that winds its way into the wood. It looks stark and bare without the ferns that border it from spring to autumn. They're blackened and withered now, dead under the powdery snow. The wintry woods have more space and air than the summer woods but less fragrance, less sounds: everything is dampened by the snow. There's a stern quality to the landscape, like a sadness. Everything is black and white, the sky is white, Merlin is the only splash of colour.

He thinks of Arthur in his aeroplane, seeing the world spread out like a map below him. He must be such a laughably easy target, so utterly, frighteningly visible there in the sky. Merlin shudders violently and hurries his steps.

The brook is iced over at the edges and near-silent in the winter hush, a thin dark snake slithering through the snow. Merlin follows it deeper into the forest and reaches a rock face where the water comes dancing from above, cascading over the lip above him. It's created a fantastic ice sculpture as the cascades have frozen into a cluster of long icicles, some white, some clear, some yellow or greenish from whatever kind of rock is underneath. It's ice on ice, layer upon layer, frozen there over days and nights. The water is still murmuring underneath, dark and trapped.

Merlin stops and stares. He had intended to sit down on the great fallen log to the side and listen to the water rush and speak, gurgle and laugh, and instead he found this eerie silence. There are no birds, no wind; everything is hushed by the blanket of snow.

He stands there in the woods and breathes, wondering if he should turn around and leave, but something about the ice castle draws him. Slowly he walks up to it, until he is as close as he can get without actually stepping into the brook. He takes off his glove and reaches out to touch the rippled surface of the ice. It's cold and slippery under his fingertips, but something is emanating from it and travelling up his arm – a tremor, a call.

 _Closer, Merlin. Lean closer._

Merlin does.

The silence around him is oppressive, heavy and dense. The only thing he hears is the murmur of water underneath the ice, the gurgle of it as it escapes the ice palace and hurries downstream in relief. Free.

 _Closer, Merlin._

He's leaning in over the brook now, so close that the tip of his nose nearly touches the ice. It's like he can feel its breath; it’s radiating chill, steaming with cold.

And that's when he sees it.

There are images in the ice. All the facets and crystals are brimming with them, still or moving, broken up, fragmented, and he, Merlin, is in each and every one of them.

So is Arthur.

Merlin chokes on a small noise like a whimper, of surprise or protest or both; like an animal in pain. What he sees makes him breathe faster until his breath surrounds him like a cloud, obscuring his view. But even if he can't see the images with his eyes, he can _feel_ them. His hands are shaking and he swallows convulsively, blinks and wills the images to go away, but when he looks, Arthur is still there. Fear breathes him in the neck but he tries to focus, tries to catch the images, one after the other.

He doesn't understand them and it brings him close to panic. He can see the image that is he and still not he, dressed in strange clothes, moving in unfamiliar surroundings… medieval. And there's Arthur, reaching out to touch his shoulder; Arthur looking into his eyes with a tired smile. Merlin's shirt is blue and his neckerchief red, he smiles back at Arthur who is sweating in chainmail. Merlin in the snow closes his eyes for a moment, and he _feels_ it, feels the weight of Arthur's gloved hand as it lands heavily on his shoulder, the smell of Arthur, of sweat and horses and earth as Arthur smiles into his eyes…

An image of Arthur at Cambridge flashes before him, the two of them crouching to pick up books scattered across the flagstones, of Arthur in the rosy afternoon light with the pulse fluttering on his neck and the smell of hot metal… their hands reaching simultaneously for the last book: _Le Morte d'Arthur_.

"No," Merlin whispers. Tears are stinging his eyes and burning in his nose. "No..."

He shakes himself and gulps down the icy air, forces himself to lean back in and continue looking, only to find that the next image frightens him even more. It doesn't look like anything he has ever seen. It's a world of steel and glass and rapid movement, of vibrations that run through his body even as he stands here in the forest, of strangely shaped bridges and people in odd-looking clothes, women in trousers, and _Arthur_ , Arthur in a suit and tie and a crisp white shirt but without a waistcoat, and the shirt collar looks strange. Perhaps they're in London, Merlin isn't sure – his gaze wanders around and yes, they're in London; he can see the dome of St Paul's in the background, across the river. And Arthur is crying. Arthur is _sobbing_ , and there's a black hole of pain in the pit of Merlin's stomach. Everything is twisted and strange and makes him lightheaded, because it looks like this is set far into the future but they're still young, they're still _young_ , not much older than they are today...

Merlin is dizzy now, nauseous, but he doesn't want to stop looking, not yet, he can't. He closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again, the image has changed.

Arthur is there, in a crown, on a throne – a king. Merlin is beside him in long red robes, and they're older now although their surroundings look medieval. Merlin has a beard; he is leaning over Arthur to speak into his ear. His hand is on Arthur's shoulder and Arthur turns his head to look up at him, his smile saying... saying that they don't need words to communicate. That smile, Merlin thinks in the snow, shows him very clearly that they are... intimate with each other.

Merlin is shivering, shaking with emotion, his stomach hot but his fingers so cold he can't feel them.

The images in the ice coincide with his dreams, but they are crystal clear where his dreams never are. His dreams hold fragments of costly red fabric embroidered with gold thread and pearls, of what he now realises is chainmail and armour; fragments of castle walls, of horses' hooves, of the twisted metal parts of that strangely shaped bridge across the Thames, although he's never before known it was a bridge. Now he sees it all as if he's taken a good few steps back to get perspective - he gets the view he was hoping that his paintings would give him. _He sees what they are._

In all these images, he sees himself from the outside like in a photograph, but he is still _inside_ himself in all the scenes, he _is_ himself, still able to feel what he felt then... what he felt when he was...

... when he was _there_.

When it happened.

Merlin hears himself groan. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes trying to blot out the images, but they're still there in his head, invading him. With a deep breath he leans back in towards the ice, focuses on another segment of it, another icicle, and plunges straight into fire.

It's a chaos of fire, fire of different kinds - there is a pyre with a dead body burning, and Merlin’s eyes are stinging with grief as much as with the smoke. There is a woman burned at the stake in a courtyard. There are enormous beating wings and a creature - a _dragon_ \- breathing roaring fire; there are flames surrounding another winged shape: a plane. Arthur's plane.

Merlin jumps backwards in the snow, staggering as if he's received a blow. A wave of nausea makes him bend double and retch but nothing comes out of his mouth.

 _No more, no more now, please make it stop._

The world is black and white around him as he stumbles back home to the house, but his mind is filled with fire. Hunith turns around when he comes in, and exclaims at the sight of him.

"Merlin! What have you done to yourself?"

"Mother," he says, shaking with cold and exhaustion, "I think it's time you told me about my father."

Hunith goes white. Her fingers clutch at the edge of the sink.

"I'm sorry, but I have to know." Merlin's teeth are chattering. "He had magic, hadn't he? What could he do? Why did he leave us? You must tell me. I need to know."

Hunith closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Yes," she says. "Yes. Your father had magic."

***

Slowly, painstakingly, Merlin removes his paintings from the walls, places them in a corner and covers them with a sheet. He knows what they represent now: his past, his present, his future, all sharing the same canvas. The whirl of time makes him nauseous.

Gaius frowns when he sees Merlin.

"You don't look well," he says and points Merlin to the deep, red armchair he favours when he visits the professor. "Would you like some tea, or do you prefer something stronger? A drop of Scotch, perhaps?"

Merlin accepts the whisky and shudders as it burns its way down. "I need to talk to you."

As Merlin tells his story, it's Gaius who turns pale. "These dreams of yours," he says, "do you only see the past in them, or the future as well?"

"I see that bridge," Merlin replies with his head bent, rolling the whisky tumbler between his palms. "The one with the twisted metal. When Arthur is crying." _God._ "What does it mean, that I can see the future? And what does it mean that I've met Arthur before? Is it all destined, don't we have our free will?"

Gaius gets up from his chair and starts pacing the room. The pale winter sunlight casts a slanting, irregular harlequin pattern across the floor. "I don't know, Merlin. All I know is that your destiny seems to be bound to Arthur, now and in the future, as it has always been."

 _Always been?_ The back of Merlin's neck goes cold with apprehension. "I - I don't understand."

Gaius doesn’t reply, just comes and sits down, leaning forward to poke at the fire. The clock is ticking on the mantelpiece. _Time._

"So if we die in the war..." Merlin says. "No, even if we don't... _when_ we die, we will meet again?"

"So it seems."

"Do we always forget? And have to find each other again, and find out? Does one of us always remember? Or both?"

"I don't know, Merlin."

It's Merlin's turn to pace. The sun is slipping behind clouds. He wants to rage, break something, cry perhaps, but not in front of Gaius. "Will you be there?"

"I don't know that, either. But I have been, before."

Merlin bites his lip, angry. "Are we trapped in some kind of hellish vortex of time? Why _me_ , why _us_?" His voice cracks, the fire in the grate spits and flares.

"Careful with your magic, Merlin. Don't let it run wild."

"There are no answers, are there?"

Gaius looks at him kindly. "If there are, you will have to find them yourself. All I know is that you and Arthur - the two of you together - can make things change. Make them better. You can make people see reason and bring about unity and peace."

Merlin's laugh is bitter. "Oh, yes," he says, "just look at the world. We've really succeeded, haven't we? Maybe if someone had _asked_ us. Uther Pendragon, perhaps?"

"You haven't begun yet," Gaius points out mildly. "Doubtlessly, you have a lot of work ahead of you."

Merlin sits down with his elbows on his thighs, staring into the fire. It's calm again. "Are we ever..." His voice trails off and he starts again. "Don't we ever get to live our _own_ lives, then? Do what we actually _want_ to do, pursue our own interests...? Don't we ever have a choice?"

"There's always a choice, Merlin."

"But..." Merlin can't accept it, can't accept that other people can live and die and be gone, like Shelley's dome of many-coloured glass, crushed at the heel of Death, whereas Merlin and Arthur... "Is it a punishment?" he whispers. "A curse? What did we do?"

"I don't know," says Gaius again, helplessly. "Perhaps you will return until you are no longer needed. I don't have the answers to your questions, Merlin."

But Merlin needs to ask one more. "If we die in the war, does that mean we failed?"

"No," says Gaius gently and puts a hand on Merlin's shoulder. "It means you did what you had to do. The only thing you could."

***

There is nothing, _nothing_ glorious about war. Arthur learns this quickly. There is skill involved in what he does, a certain amount of boldness and definitely of luck, an adrenaline surge that could get addictive. But it isn’t glorious.

Arthur gains the respect of the other reconnaissance pilots for his number of flights and the bold - or insane - things he will do in order to get the photographs, but what that means in practice is that he is responsible for more deaths than any of the others. Where is the glory in that?

He likes the other pilots well enough, and his observer is like a brother. They are a dedicated, easy-going bunch, several of them university students who interrupted their education to enlist, and one of them is a hell of a pianist.

The common denominator between them, apart from aeroplanes, is fire. They are all joined in their terror of burning. They awake sweating from nightmares where the cough and splutter of engines mingles with the thumping of AA guns, where they spiral down from the sky with screaming wires to die in a roar of flames.

***

When Merlin opens the door and sees the telegram boy he is instantly sick with dread, tearing the envelope open with fingers that are numb and clumsy.

 _Arrive Cambridge Sat 24 STOP Expect me pm STOP AP_

The telegram flutters to the floor as Merlin leans against the wall, shaking with relief. He's an idiot. If Arthur dies, no one will send a telegram to _him_. Morgana would think to come and tell him, perhaps.

Merlin turns to look at himself in the mirror, wondering what Arthur will see. They haven't seen each other for months. Is he changed? Is Arthur? Do they even know each other any more?

When the knock comes at last and Merlin opens the door, his mind seizes up and freezes. Arthur is in uniform. He looks like a stranger. He is still so handsome it makes Merlin's heart stop, but there is a different set to his jaw and a new darkness in his eyes.

"Merlin," he says. The word frays a little at the end.

He has lost weight. His cheekbones, the structure of his face, make Merlin ache. He pulls Arthur inside and locks the door, making his world all Arthur again, all his senses inundated with Arthur. It's like the room has been dead since Arthur left and now leaps to life. Their clothes come off, uniform jacket, trousers, shirts and braces strewn across the floor, until they're stripped down to bare skin and human sweat and base, animal instinct.

The sex is desperate. They need to get this out of the way; they need to claim this from each other before they can talk. Merlin lets Arthur take him, sensing Arthur's need to be in control of _something_ , even if it's temporary, even if it's only an illusion. He pins Merlin's wrists down above his head and fucks him until Merlin's eyes roll back in his head and he silences himself with magic not to scream the house down. For a moment the air in the room turns gold, but Arthur is coming and doesn't see, groaning into Merlin's neck.

They fall asleep entangled while the sweat is still drying on their skin.

Merlin dreams of costly red fabric and clanging armour, of mud and horses and fire.

It's better in the morning, when they are re-acquainted and the edge is taken off. Arthur is gentler, less frantic, and they take their time exploring each other.

"I dream in maps, Merlin," he says later as they lie side by side smoking. "I dream in patterns of fields and hills, railways and rivers, bridges east-west. I spend my days finding out how we can do the most damage, how we can kill the most people with the least possible effort. God, Merlin, war is destructive in so many ways and on so many levels."

"You spend your days saving people's lives, too," Merlin points out. "I know you. You probably go closer than anyone, do more stupidly heroic things than anyone."

Arthur laughs and shakes his head.

"There are rumours of conscription," Merlin says quietly and sits up to stub his cigarette out. "When do you think it will start?"

"Considering our losses, it'll have to be soon." Arthur sits up, too, leaning his forehead against Merlin's shoulder, running his fingertips up and down Merlin's back. "I can't stand the thought of you in the war," he says, "but if you're called up, you must promise to tell me. I have to know."

"Of course. Of course I'll tell you." And if Merlin had intended to say anything more, the words are lost in a kiss.


	5. Forward

_nearing death, one sees death no more and stares forward_

 

So the day has come, Arthur thinks, gritting his teeth as he folds the letter back into the envelope. Merlin - odd, gentle Merlin who loves poetry - what are they doing sending him to the front? _I’m not afraid to die_ , Merlin writes, and it makes Arthur furious, because what the hell kind of thing is that to say? Like he's given up before he's even there?

Out on the airstrip a plane comes in for landing, and even if it's wobbling it seems intact. Arthur takes it for a good omen, aware that he is clutching at straws.

The first time he visited Merlin's rooms at Cambridge he had looked at _Adonais_ and Merlin had said: "If someone dies, someone you really, deeply love..."

Arthur scrunches up the envelope in his hand. _God, Merlin, stay alive._ But he knows the odds; he's seen too much of the churned-up fields and destroyed woods, the unchanging lines of the trenches to have much hope. If he ever sees Merlin again, it will be nothing short of a bloody miracle.

He gnaws on a thumbnail, looks up at the ceiling. He is no believer in miracles.

***

It's like a dream, like one of his nightmares that he won't wake up from. There's a sense of unreality like a wall of glass separating Merlin from the world, and yet this is more real than anything. They're in full uniform. The sun is hot on their faces and Merlin's collar itches and chafes. People are grinning and waving, posing for the camera. Merlin hates having this moment documented.

Training is over and they are waiting to be shipped off to Belgium.

Will comes over and throws an arm around Merlin's shoulders, tilts their heads together and squints at the photographer, cocky and incongruously relaxed. Merlin's cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth and Will's from between his fingers; Will smiles a fraction, and if this is the last ever photograph of them, at least they'll look good in it. Almost like they're up to the task that lies before them, Merlin thinks, and perhaps they are. Perhaps dying is easy.

There are four boys from Ealdor in their group, including Merlin and Will. Will says that if the war continues, this will have to change. People from the same village can't be grouped together and sent to the front like this; there will be places in Britain wiped of entire generations of men. He is probably right - Will is right surprisingly often - but just now Merlin is glad of this method of conscription. It feels absurdly good to have someone he knows at his side.

Merlin hates ships, hates water travel. He vomits his way across the Channel and climbs into the lorry shaky and pale. Around him people are drunk, smoking, singing like they're on a field trip for grownups, and Merlin actually dozes for a while, jostled between Will and the boy on his other side.

It's the silence of the men that wakes him up. They're passing a machine gun emplacement and there's no longer any room for pretending. They're here. It's real.

No training could have prepared them for this, Merlin thinks. They feel the frontline trenches like a gigantic, live electric wire, an enormous pulsing machine primed on death;, its heartbeat reverberating in their bodies.

Deposited in their section of trench, Merlin holds on to the wall and closes his eyes. The earth itself is groaning and twisting in agony, its surface pitted and destroyed by shells, soaked with blood. The very fabric of nature is being ripped apart, making Merlin nauseous with the pain.

He will need to shut things out, not notice more than is absolutely necessary.

When he looks up, his field of vision is framed by sandbags, wood supports and coils of barbed wire. Will comes over and puts a hand on Merlin's shoulder. He doesn't say anything.

As darkness falls, searchlights begin to sweep the sky, crisscrossing it relentlessly. An aircraft caught in the beam will be helpless. Merlin shudders. He's been so far removed from Arthur's reality, and now that he sees it, he is afraid.

It begins to rain, like an ineffectual whisper to soothe the world.

***

They're running through the mud in chaos. Shells impact around them, sending up fountains of wet dirt. The dry staccato of machine gun fire is loud in their ears and adrenaline bitter in their mouths. Merlin's magic wraps and curls itself around him like a protective cocoon. Beside him, Will is slipping and falling, shouting without words, and while Merlin stretches out his magic to protect him, the boy on his other side is hit.

When it's over, more than a third of them are dead. Merlin is shaking where he sits, listening to the groans and the panicked calls for stretcher bearers. The rain is drumming on his helmet. He is alive.

***

The long stretches of inactivity are almost worse than being under attack. Merlin has two books in his pack; a collection of Shelley's poems and his notebook. He tries to write to his mother but can't think of anything in his current life that he can tell her other than the fact that they get enough food, and an eighth of a pint of rum in the mornings to warm them up. He tries to write to Arthur but the words come out jumbled, sounding flat. They don't describe the torpor or the chaos, noise or vigil, or how he sleeps on his feet cradling his rifle, his cheek pressed to the wall. The pages of the notebook are so damp the tip of his pen keeps catching. He doesn't send those letters.

***

 _Is it not strange,_ Arthur writes, _how small, insignificant details suddenly feel meaningful to us? You write about wildflowers below the parapet; I have watched swallows nest under the roof. Now that the nest is empty, I have the oddest sense of loss._

 _No, when I think about it, it is not strange at all. We are in an extreme situation and these things remind us of life as it could be, should be. As it will be again._

Closing his eyes, Merlin leans his head against the wall. As life could be, as it should be. They took so much for granted before the war. The world of abstraction and theory that they were free to inhabit, a world where other things would take second place to intellect and ideas... At Cambridge, Merlin painted to understand his dreams and express his magic. His paintings made it visible to others but known only to himself. Here, he can put his magic to actual use as long as it goes unobserved. Here in the trenches where everything is reduced to the crass, physical reality of survival and defence, of bodily functions and basic needs, even his magic is used in a practical way.

For the men in the trenches, he thinks, there are no broader views. Their world stretches no further than the loops of barbed wire and those flowers below the parapet, and for most of them, the future does not reach beyond tomorrow.

***

The first time Merlin meets an enemy soldier face to face, it's a young boy appearing suddenly out of the artillery smoke with his bayonet ready. When its point slips, deflected by Merlin's shield of magic, the boy's eyes widen and he takes a step back, leaving himself open for attack. They stare at each other for an endless second and Merlin can't bring himself to kill him, can't. He knocks the boy out with magic and erases the last few minutes from his mind, stumbling away with his stomach churning, staggering under the guilt of what he has done and what he hasn't.

***

It's been raining incessantly for weeks. Everything is wet and filthy; clothes, skin, tobacco. Everything tastes like the ground. They live in a sea of mud with dirty faces and matted hair, live for their next cigarette or their next meal, enjoying it intensely in the moment because chances are it's their last.

***

On a still, misty evening, they hear faint song. It takes them a moment to realise it's coming from the trenches on the other side. There's a minute of quiet where the only thing heard is the voices rising from the enemy trenches - no aircraft engines, no guns, no shells, only stillness and distant song.

"I wish it could be over," Will mutters when he can't stand the wistful voices any longer. "Those blokes, they don't want this any more than we do. Can't you _do_ something, Merlin? Can't you use your - "

"Shh," Merlin hisses, glancing around. "Don't you think I would have if I could? This is enormous, Will; it's too huge for me. But if you want to know, I've saved your sorry arse more than once. Don't make me regret it."

Will looks at him like he wants to say something, but offers Merlin a cigarette instead. Merlin accepts it as an apology.

***

They're elated to be alive after the latest barrage, escaping with injuries that are ignorable in comparison to what they see around them. Their laughter holds just a tinge of hysteria. One of the new recruits, Gilli, has a broken thumb; his hand is bruising and swelling up.

"Some battle wound, Gilli," Will says between hoots of mirth. "Own up now - you weren't even out there, were you? You just slipped on your way to the latrines."

Gilli's ears turn red and it's good to laugh, good to break a cigarette in two and feel it under your fingers, good to share it with friends.

***

Crouching below the breastwork of heaped sandbags, Merlin remembers another war, a vast plain where battles were fought with swords and shields, lances and armour, a war where his own magic was used as a weapon to create terror and destruction.

He presses his fists to his eyes, remembering the force and fury of his magic as it was then, back when he could end a war. But those wars didn't have this scope. Now, he can sense every cog and wheel of the immense war machine as it moves laboriously, inexorably forward like a gigantic creature, a dragon breathing fire and death. Guns and cavalry horses, fighter planes and desperate men, zeppelins and observation balloons, the trenches running like sick veins through the destroyed landscape... Merlin feels it all, the suffering, the fear and pain, the hatred and the many, many acts of kindness and courage. And he feels shame for his weakened magic, the small-scale work that he is reduced to. He can remove memories, lessen pain, stop the men around him being plagued by lice and trench foot, but he can’t obliterate the cause of the suffering.

He remembers asking Gaius if this is punishment for something he has done or failed to do; if it's a curse. Whatever he did, he thinks, this mud-filled hell must atone for it.

***

Arthur hates the infrequency of Merlin's letters, hates the constant fear that Merlin is dead and Arthur doesn't know. He hasn't heard anything for weeks. But Mrs Emrys would write him, he tells himself, and he can always write to her if his letters don't reach Merlin and that's why there's no news. Perhaps Merlin thinks _Arthur_ is dead.

He is more afraid for Merlin's life than for his own. So far he's been miraculously lucky, escaping enemy fire apart for a few cuts and grazes and some minor damage to the plane, and his long stretch of ground staff duty has done him good. He has to survive to find out. He must find Merlin again.

It can't go on forever, he thinks. There aren't enough men.

***

Will is grimacing on the stretcher, clutching at his side and trying not to groan. Blood seeps through his fingers; the fabric of his jacket is dark with it.

"You're strong, you'll be fine," Merlin assures him, and there's a flicker of a brave smile on Will's face.

"God, am I glad to be out of here," he says, gasping a little, "and not have to look at your ugly mug every morning. Think of all the... all the pretty nurses... at the clearing station."

Merlin squeezes his hand, relieving Will of some of the pain, sucking it into himself and coating it with magic like a grain of sand inside an oyster. When Will is lifted into the ambulance Merlin turns away, ashamed of the surge of loneliness and self-pity, trying to push it down. Will is going to be well, he'll be sent home, but Merlin's war seems never-ending.

***

Merlin comes to hate the decision-makers, the planners, the ones who send all these men to be killed and to kill other men who only want to live their lives, pursue their own interests. Love, have children, grow old - and _then_ die, and not from a bayonet between the ribs.

***

The wind rushes and screams in Arthur's ears, adrenaline pounds in his veins and leaves a bitter taste at the back of his throat. The wounded earth is twisting and turning under his wingtip, partially obscured by a veil of smoke from artillery fire. Flashes from gun batteries light up along the trenches that snake through the torn landscape.

Arthur knows better than anyone how vulnerable they are up here in the sky, how defenceless and utterly visible. All they have is their machine gun and the skill of the pilot.

And Arthur is skilled, he has a staggering amount of hours in the air, but he doesn't feel heroic at all; he is angry and frightened and tired. The average life expectancy of a fighter pilot on the front is 93 flying hours and he has far more than that. He is well aware of living on overtime, and today is the day his luck runs out.

The second they're hit, he knows.

There's a dry, sharp noise followed by a sickening sound of tearing metal and a groan from the gunner, and their own gun goes abruptly silent.

"Corbin!" Arthur shouts into the whistling wind. "Corbin, are you hit?"

He makes a steep turn to get them out of range, take them behind the lines before they have to come down, trying to twist his neck to get a visual of the gunner and assess the damage on the plane.

"Corbin!" he shouts again.

But Corbin is beyond hearing, beyond everything where he's slumped to the side with half his face bloody. And as Arthur looks behind, he knows that Corbin might be the lucky one. They're on fire, every pilot's nightmare, the one thing that frightens them most.

Pendragon and Corbin, hardened veterans with a legendary number of successful flights - this is where it ends. Nothing can be done for either of them now.

So this is what it's like to stare at inevitability, Arthur thinks. This is what it's like to die.

Oddly, an image of Merlin at Cambridge comes before him, of Merlin smiling under the mortarboard that makes his ears look ridiculous, and Arthur laughs on a sob.

 _Well, Merlin, I suppose the miracle didn't happen._

***

When the sound of the whistle pierces the air, the men charge up from the trenches like insects rushing into fire. The new recruit next to Merlin is white-faced and wild-eyed with fear.

"Don't go at the whistle," Merlin has told him repeatedly, but the boy has forgotten every instruction and starts up over the top in sheer terror. Merlin holds him back with a firm grip at the back of his belt. "Don't go at the whistle!" he bellows again through the noise. "Get your head down, you idiot! Listen to the machine guns!"

There's the cough of them now, and when it's followed by the whiz of shells, Merlin is crawling forward with dirt in his mouth and mud squelching between his fingers. The ground is vibrating, groaning with the assault. Merlin pulls the terrified recruit down with him into a shell hole and presses his head down. The boy is shaking, pale under the grime.

"Stay down," Merlin bawls in his ear, "stay down until I tell you."

Shrapnel flies through the air, dirt clatters on their helmets. Merlin's chin is pressed into soft mud and somewhere in front of them a dying horse is screaming. The boy groans. "I can't stand it," his lips form, "I can't stand it."

Merlin closes his eyes and the screaming stops. His magic writhes in revulsion, hates being used to kill.

And then there is a different image pushing at the inferno around them, trying to wedge itself into Merlin's mind. Merlin gasps and blinks as his vision fills with it, an image from another kind of hell. He is lifted away from shells and mud to cold air rushing around him, whipping at his face and whistling in his ears; he is hurtling from the skies in an aircraft with wobbling wings and screaming wires. Next to him is a dead man with his head lolling and his hands still on the gun - and there's _Arthur_.

They've been hit. The plane is on fire.

Merlin's head is clearing. He is still pressed into the mud with his hand on the terrified boy's head and the ground shaking with explosions, but his mind is alive with Arthur. He can _feel_ Arthur now, the desperation and will to live, the fight to survive. But he feels Arthur's resignation, too, because there is only one way this can end.

Merlin can't allow it. He can't let Arthur die. They are destined to be together, they are intended to make things change. Arthur's life is not meant to be cut off here and now, not if Merlin can stop it - and he can. His magic can.

Closing his eyes, he lets the world fade away around him as he focuses his magic, summoning up every strand of it until it's hot and alive, pure energy whipping through his body and mind. The power of it exhilarates him. He has never felt it like this, and still it's so profoundly familiar it fills him with triumph, with joy. It rises in him like a roar, terrifying in its force, a dam breaking free of its confines.

Merlin no longer has a body, he is made of magic alone, a fierce being rushing through the sky to Arthur, who needs him.

There is sweat on Arthur's face and panic in his eyes as fire licks along the fuselage and reaches the gunner's clothes. The stench of oil and burning fabric is thick in the air; the plane is about to be devoured by fire.

Merlin stalls. He can extinguish the flames, but the craft will be too damaged to carry its crew back behind the lines - he must do something different. When he tries to feel the structure of the plane it isn't obvious to him; he can't _feel_ it like he felt Arthur's Dragonfly, and that makes it hard for him to command.

The solution lies in the problem. The plane can't carry Arthur, the fire can't carry the plane, but there is something else Merlin can do with the fire, something that will heed his voice and fly through the air...

Merlin calls the flames. He calls them and they answer him; they roar and twist as he transforms them. With burning eyes he shapes them into a huge, scaly creature, the creature that his father could command and that shows itself in Merlin's dreams, the creature whose ancient voice speaks to Merlin's blood. It's made of heat and beauty, of flame and force and beating wings. Above the din Merlin's voice rises clear and strong, demanding, and the dragon, born of the fire and of Merlin’s will, bows its terrible head and obeys the command.

 _Take him, return him to safety._

Merlin watches the enormous wings envelope the frail vehicle, the scaly body coiling itself around it to protect it with fire, not consume. He watches the magical beast of his creation carry its precious cargo into the distance.

 _Return him to safety. Don't let him die._

***

When Merlin comes back to himself, dizzy with the transition from skies and air to the mud and clamour of no man's land, he is alone in the shellhole. It's half filled with water and his uniform is soaked and heavy; the rain is coming down in torrents. He rubs a dirty hand across his face and looks around for the recruit. The boy is lying on his back some twenty yards away with his feet in a puddle, staring up at the sky with open, unseeing eyes. Rain is streaming down his face, washing the blood away.

With smarting eyes, coughing from smoke, Merlin hoists himself out of the hole to crawl back towards safety. His mouth is dry and his lips gritty; he is shaking with guilt and exhaustion. If he hadn't been so intent on saving Arthur he could have made the recruit duck his head and stay put; he saved the life of one man only to have the death of another on his conscience. The selfishness of his priorities makes him feel sick, but leaving Arthur was never an option, will never be an option.

And Arthur is alive. The glow of him is steady at the edge of Merlin's mind.

Back in the trench bunker he sits on the floor, drying out the clothes next to his skin with magic but leaving trousers and jacket wet, or someone will notice. He leans his head against the cold wall, succumbing to the heaviness of his limbs. The warm golden light of his magic is nearly extinguished, mere embers in the darkness of his mind as sleep takes him.

It's only minutes before he is wakened again, not by noise or another attack, but by a tremor touching his magic, a sense of something imminent, an edge of threat cutting through his fatigue.

He sits up straight and listens, stumbles out into the trench looking up in confusion. But the danger is not coming from the sky; it's coming from the earth itself. Merlin can feel it slipping; masses of it set in motion... The wood supports around him begin to creak and groan in protest.

A mudslide. The trench is going to collapse.

Sluggish with exhaustion, Merlin presses his back against the retaining wall, stretching his arms out like a soaring bird and gathering up the remains of his frayed, used-up magic to keep the trench intact. The masses of earth press and push against his magic, wanting only to level themselves out, to fill the man-made hollows and spaces and heal their own wounds. From further on along the trench, someone shouts _Mudslide!_ and chaos ensues. Merlin stays where he is, closes his eyes and opens his mouth to the rain, drained of power, focusing every scrap of it he has left.

He holds the wall until the lorries arrive to pick them up. The last thing he remembers is half climbing, half being dragged inside, out of the rain, before darkness takes him.

***

 _Merlin kneels in the field beside Arthur, his king, with his fingers pressed to the wound that cannot be healed, feeling the stench of death mingle with the sweetness of crushed grass. There is a thin trail of blood from the corner of Arthur's mouth and Merlin leans down to kiss the pale lips, whispering "We will meet again," because they have talked about this before and he wants to remind Arthur how it will be, what they will become, that this is not the end._

 _"Yes," Arthur manages through his pain, and his hand crushes Merlin's. "Yes. But we will not remember."_

 _And the light is gone from his eyes and Merlin bends his head, his own eyes hot and dry as his forehead touches the King's pauldron._


	6. The Tall Trees of Tears

_the tall trees of tears and the fields of blooming sadness_

 

"Oh, hello," a soft voice says from somewhere above Merlin, " _there_ you are at last."

The light is bright and strange when he cracks his eyes open a fraction. The feel of the sheets is unfamiliar and so are the noises around him, but the smell... the smell is... he must be...

"Merlin. Merlin?" The voice persists. "Can you talk? How are you feeling?"

There's a hand holding his, a small female hand, and when he opens his eyes just a little more, frowning in disapproval of the light, a face hovers over him like a mirage, a very beautiful one.

"What in...? _Morgana_?" It comes out like a small, pathetic croak, but Morgana smiles as if she just heard a blackbird sing. Her hand squeezes his. "Where am I?" he asks in confusion.

"In hospital," she says. "Oh, Merlin, I hope you can tell us what's wrong with you."

"Uh," Merlin says, because he has no idea that anything is wrong, except the fact that he seems to have been unconscious. His body is heavy and strange between the sheets that feel so unfathomably clean after the mud and dirt of the trenches. He moves experimentally and it doesn't hurt, nothing hurts, he is only abysmally tired. "I don't know. Is there something wrong?"

"Merlin..." Morgana laughs, a small, thin, joyless laugh. "You've been unconscious for ten days. The doctors haven't been able to find anything. No external injuries, your reaction tests are fine..."

"I don't think," Merlin says as his head slowly clears, "I don't _think_ I'm injured. I feel... normal. Just tired. Can I have some water?"

She gives him some, holding the glass to his lips while her other hand raises his head, cupped under the back of it. He swallows and gasps, chokes and coughs, before she gently lowers him back onto the pillow, and to Merlin's surprise he feels her warm, soft lips touch his forehead. It feels marvellous; the first tender touch of skin against skin for an eternity. Loss and longing come shuddering through him in an irrepressible wave.

"What are you doing here?" he manages.

The question is valid and sincere. Morgana, stunning socialite with a taste for champagne in the afternoon – what on earth _is_ she doing in a military hospital?

"I would have thought that's obvious, Merlin," she says in a clipped tone, her nostrils distending in fake disapproval, and now she sounds very much like the old Morgana of Cambridge. "I'm a nurse." Then she grins down at him. "Sometimes Arthur and I are more alike than I feel comfortable admitting," she states matter-of-factly. "The truth is I just couldn't sit around in England twiddling my thumbs when there was so much to do here. I wanted to go where the action was. I wanted to _do_ something, something _real_ , and try to make a difference in whatever way I could. If I can’t do it in the wider perspective, so perhaps at least for one person."

Merlin's head is clearing, and the idea of Morgana twiddling her thumbs is absurd enough to make him laugh. It feels unreal, to be away from the mud and damp and gunfire, talking to Morgana, of all people.

"Art history didn't seem very urgent or important all of a sudden," she says. "It will keep."

"Yes," Merlin mutters, "but will _we_?

A stern woman who looks like some kind of head nurse appears briskly at the edge of his field of vision, the sound of her heels hard against the floor. "Sister LeFay!" Her voice is like a whip. "What are you doing dawdling here? Bed 16 is vomiting. Go and tend to him."

"Oh, the endless fun and games," Morgana sighs as she rises from the chair, reluctantly letting go of Merlin's hand. His fingers trail against hers; he doesn't want to let her go, either. She's a piece of home, of England, of Arthur, of everything that he misses. "Apparently we have a vomiting bed. I'd better go and see to it."

Merlin snorts and Morgana smiles down at him, very softly. The light from the window behind her gives her an incongruous halo.

"I'll come back as soon as I can," she promises.

She throws him a last smile over her shoulder as she walks away, wearing her nurse's uniform like it's haute couture. Merlin closes his eyes around the image of her.

***

The doctors never do find out what's wrong with Merlin. He stays silent, offering no theories, unable to tell them he was most likely unconscious after exhausting his magic. When he woke up it was still faint but it's returning to him gradually, with a different feel to it, like it's reborn stronger, like a balance has been restored. The golden haze of Arthur in Merlin's mind is the same as the gold of his magic, snaking through his veins, weaving into his thoughts.

Even without Merlin's help, the doctors eventually conclude that he is suffering from exhaustion, physical and mental – a common enough condition among soldiers at the front.

Merlin doesn't see Morgana again. When Sister Wright comes to tell him he'll be released from hospital and sent back to the front, she presses a note into his hand with a conspiratorial whisper of "Sister LeFay" and a wink.

When Merlin unfolds the note, the hastily scribbled words kick in his chest like a shock. Even if he knew, it's good to have confirmation:

 _Merlin,  
I'm so sorry I couldn't come back and see you.  
I thought you'd like to know that Arthur is in hospital in France and will be taken to London as soon as he can be moved. His plane was shot down – he is being treated for burns but nothing life-threatening.  
Clara - Sister Wright - tells me you are to return to the front. God, Merlin. If only there was something I... or you... could do to stop it all.  
Just survive, Merlin, please.  
Yours,  
Morgana_

***

Being bedridden in hospital, injured and in pain, is one thing; being on the mend is another, and apparently it means boredom. Arthur tries to stave it off by writing endless letters in his head to Merlin, who is dead for all he knows. Passchendaele has come to be synonymous with heavy losses and unfathomable suffering, synonymous with hell on earth. What are the odds?

Arthur sits in bed with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and thinks of Merlin at Cambridge, in another life when the world looked different and they were different people. Someone on the other side of the wall is screaming endlessly, howling and retching and cursing; perhaps one of the poor devils who were gassed and can't bear the touch of their own clothes as they vomit up their rotting insides.

A nurse comes up to him. "There's a letter for you, Captain," she says.

He can't recall seeing her before. She is pretty despite the dark circles beneath her eyes and the brittleness that comes from months of sleep deprivation. Her smile is frail and sharp like a piece of glass and Arthur thinks his own must be much the same, cut and shaped by pain.

There is a split second of wild hope as he takes the letter from her, but it dies as quickly as it flared up.

The letter has taken its time to reach him. It's dated a month ago, and even Morgana's flowing, elegant hand is dulled by her exhaustion.

 _When I think I've seen everything_ , she writes, _it gets worse, or just different, and when I think it has to stop it starts all over again. All this dying, Arthur! All the groaning and bleeding and vomiting, all these men whose lives are destroyed along with their bodies, and this horrible, horrible stench. We burn amputated limbs in the incinerator. It's all so revolting, so hopeless. Where will it end? Will it ever end?_

Arthur leans back and closes his eyes. The unbearable sounds from the other side of the wall continue, and further off someone is calling nurses to the ambulance entrance where more casualties are coming in. _No, Morgana,_ he thinks wearily, imagining her with blood-spattered apron and tired eyes, _there is no end in sight._

***

Morgana's next letter reaches Arthur at Etaples, where he waits to be sent home. He puts it in his pocket and goes for a walk. By the war cemetery he stops to look out over the rows of spindly wooden crosses that are leaning slightly this way and that. It makes them look like a copse of odd, ghostly trees swaying in the wind. At the far end more graves are being dug.

Shuddering, he breathes in the salty air from the sea and pulls the letter from his pocket.

He reads it, and reads it again, and sits down on the ground. Tears must be a common sight here by the cemetery with its crooked crosses, but Arthur's tears are not from sorrow; they are born of relief and anger.

 _Merlin looked so horribly thin,_ Morgana writes, _but as far as we could find there was nothing wrong with him apart from exhaustion, and he laughed the same way he did at Cambridge._

So this is the good news and the bad, because Merlin's been sent back to the front.

Seagulls are crying overhead, and beyond the rows of crosses the sun glitters on the sea. Arthur wipes at his eyes and puts the letter back in his pocket.

***

The silence is the strangest thing about this place, Arthur thinks as he lies with his eyes closed, listening to the absence of noise. The stillness feels unreal after the endless months of engines and guns and adrenaline, and later the clamour of military hospitals. It does him good and scares him in equal measure. He is glad to be back in England and out of danger, but it frightens him not to be in action, stranded here unable to do anything of importance.

The house is large and the surroundings beautiful; a country house commandeered by the military as a convalescent home for those invalided out of the war. The library is intact and they have free use of it, but Arthur had to turn around and leave as soon as he entered. The smell of dust and old leather held too many memories.

There are footsteps in the corridor, approaching the room and entering, but Arthur doesn't look up until someone touches his hair.

"Arthur."

Uther Pendragon is a tall man, towering above the bed, and Arthur's first reaction is not joy or even surprise - it's a gut reaction to stand up not to be at a physical disadvantage.

"Father," he says, scrambling to his feet.

"No, no," says Uther hastily, reaching out to touch Arthur's shoulder and remembering, settling instead for a gesture towards the bed. "You need to rest, I am told."

His suit is immaculate as always, the white shirt perfectly crisp, but there is more grey at his temples than Arthur remembered and a tiredness around his eyes that has more to do with worry than age.

"I do nothing but," Arthur replies, sounding petulant. "Rest doesn't mean I have to lie down. Let's go outside."

A nurse brings them tea, watery and weak from the leaves being used too many times, but it's good to have something to do with their hands, something to hide behind.

"The doctor tells me you have healed well," Uther says as the wasps drone around the honey pot. "Are you in any pain?"

Arthur shakes his head, wondering if Uther thinks he would admit to it if he was. Uther appears to want to say something without quite knowing how. Something is off - Uther is a politician, and glib phrases always roll easily off his tongue. He is looking at Arthur's left hand, still bandaged for protection from the sun, and his eyes are watering as if the light is too sharp. It's not until he reaches out and places a hand on Arthur's undamaged shoulder that Arthur realises he is moved.

"I want you to know that I'm very proud of you, Arthur," Uther says, choked. "Very proud."

Arthur braces himself not to shrink from the touch, looks at his father and sees a middle-aged, still handsome man with hard eyes, unused to expressing true emotion. _I'm not afraid of him any more,_ he realises, but it gives him no satisfaction, only makes him feel empty and sad. The irony of it is bitter - that he should have his father's approval now, when he no longer feels the need for it.

 _It's too late, father,_ he thinks, but nods and says quietly: "Thank you."

When Uther rises from the bench to leave, the visit has lasted an hour, and Arthur can't remember the last time he spent that much time with his father alone.

***

The leaves of the trees are dancing in the wind, the gently rolling hills are misty blue in the distance. If Arthur keeps his eyes level with the second-floor window where he is standing, this could be peacetime, it could be England prosperous and bright as she should be, not tired and drained as she is. But when he lowers his eyes he sees the park scattered with broken men, on crutches, in wheelchairs, on recliners; men with bandage-covered eyes and missing limbs.

He turns away from the window and slowly descends the still carpeted stairs. The men are encouraged to spend time outside, take fresh air and as much exercise as the nature of their injuries allows.

After a turn around the park Arthur settles on a bench by the orangerie, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes to the sun. His burns have healed well; his left arm and shoulder and part of the side of his neck are a desert of puckered skin, taut and ridged, fragile and shiny pink. In two months he is due before a medical board to see if he is fit to return to duty.

A shadow falls over him, darkening the red glow behind his eyelids and cooling the heat on his face.

"Arthur?"

Startled, he opens his eyes to the sound of the familiar voice, and there is Leon blocking the sun. Leon of kindness and wide smiles, of childhood adventures and teenage posturing, of cricket matches and drinking games and the old world where they were whole. Arthur stands and embraces him, wordlessly.

Leon turns to sit on the bench, leaning his crutches against the wall. He has lost his left leg from the knee. The glass panes of the orangerie are blinding in the sun and Arthur blinks at the sting.

They look at each other, acquainting themselves with their altered appearance. Leon pats the stump of his leg, Arthur opens his shirt to demonstrate his scars and quickly covers them again; they’re not to be exposed to the sun.

"Repulsive, isn't it?"

But Leon shakes his head. "People know what it is. They'll see it and know you're a hero; it won't put anyone off."

"Neither will your lack of left foot," Arthur replies solemnly.

Leon snorts and suddenly they're laughing. The air is ringing with it, the feeling is so good, the warmth of it under their ribs.

"We're alive," Leon says.

Others didn't have their luck. Gwaine is dead. Percy is dead. Lancelot is reported missing.

"Have you heard from Merlin?" Leon asks quietly, and Arthur can only shake his head.

A blackbird is hopping on the lawn, a squirrel scurries up a tree and the wind bows the long grass in the meadow. The men sit side by side in silence, marring the pastoral with their mess of human emotion.


	7. Our Heart Surmounts Us

_our heart  
surmounts us always_

 

Arthur is never called before the medical board, because the war does come to an end at last. In November there's a ceasefire, and then it's Christmas in this year of grace 1918.

The Pendragon estate is decorated for the holidays and everything feels unreal, a pretend world. There's an enormous Christmas tree in the drawing-room, its glass baubles bright and glittering for no one. Fires burn in the grates, candles are lit and the stars are cold in the sky.

Uther is held up at Whitehall but Morgana returns from France, and Arthur wanders with her across black and white marble through echoing halls, not knowing what to do, what to say. Her beauty has deepened and matured; there's a sadness in her eyes that will never go away, the same one they both carry. Death is lodged inside them. Morgana is only twenty-four but at her left temple there's a thin strand of white in the black masses of her hair. The sight of it makes Arthur ache. He wants to pull her close and whisper it all better, as though it were possible, as though anyone could. They look bleakly at each other and try to smile.

Morgana assesses the scarring of Arthur's burns with professional coolness. The touch of her fingers makes him shiver and the physical memory of Merlin strikes like a flash of lightning: long slender hands on his body, fingertips playing over his ribs. He turns away from Morgana before his eyes betray him.

On Boxing Day Arthur sits at the desk in the library, slowly leafing through a book on Botticelli. When the angels look up at him from the glossy pages with Merlin's eyes he gives up and puts his head on his arms, feeling the book under his palms, his eyes stinging with loss.

When Morgana enters, he is frozen into position. He can't even lift his head when her hand squeezes his shoulder.

"Come on, Arthur," she says gently. "Let's go for a walk."

The world is pale and brittle with frost, quiet and empty without fighter planes in the sky. Arthur pushes his gloved hands into his coat pockets, hunches his shoulders and tries not to think, tries not to acknowledge the fact that Mrs Emrys has not replied to his letter asking if she’s heard from Merlin.

 _It doesn't mean anything_ , he thinks.

The truth is that nothing means anything any more.

***

When Arthur wakes up screaming, it takes mere seconds for Morgana to come running to sit on the edge of his bed. She is still on full alert for emergencies, waking up at the smallest noise. She strokes his sweaty hair and holds him while he gasps and sobs out incoherent phrases, giving her torn images from his dreams, spitting them out like they've been chewed.

"It's all right," she whispers, "it's all right," as if those words could make it so.

Arthur is always pale in the morning after a nightmare, his face drawn and tense. He rolls his shoulder and grimaces like the burn is troubling him, but there's no fooling Morgana. She knows his pain is all in his mind, knows it well because it's hers, too.

Now and again he thinks she's the only thing that keeps him going.

***

The new year breaks.

Late in the morning of its third day, Arthur is reading the paper in the breakfast room over a lazy cup of coffee when the maid opens the door with a curtsy.

"Mr Emrys, sir."

At first Arthur doesn't take in the meaning, and when he does he blanks out. The room fades around him and the entire world is incomprehensible. He stares at the floor while some distant part of his brain registers the light falling across the wood, deepening the honey-colour. Then he must have sprung up, for he is suddenly on his feet; his chair is turned over and his coffee cup is pushed off the table, the remaining liquid spreading like a brown rose on the Oriental rug. The room swims.

Merlin is so very thin and pale as he stands in the doorway. His dark hair is growing back from the brutal army cut and he is all cheekbones and eyes. Is he even real? He seems to shimmer in the morning light, to float against the dark hallway behind him, but perhaps it's only in Arthur's blurred vision. Nothing makes sense and yet everything does, the way it always has with Merlin.

"Arthur," Merlin says. His voice, his _voice_ , it shakes Arthur to pieces. "I know I shouldn't have turned up like this, so unexpectedly. I should have telegraphed first, but..." Like he is unsure of his welcome.

 _Dear God,_ Arthur thinks, wondering if he is going to pass out.

"Merlin," he manages. His throat aches with tears and the name is barely audible through the noise in his head.

Before Merlin can speak again, hurried footsteps come echoing through the hall behind him.

"Merlin? Merlin!"

Morgana rushes in, her hair wild, and Merlin catches her to stop them both falling. She throws her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek, they're both laughing and Morgana is crying, and Arthur blesses her presence that gives him time to collect himself.

"You survived," she says inanely, smiling up into Merlin's eyes.

His face is unreadable as he kisses her forehead and then the strand of white in her hair. "You asked me to," he says, "so I did. For you."

"Oh, Merlin," Morgana says, still laughing, "you're such a liar, and such an atrociously bad one."

When she glances at Arthur, Merlin turns to look at Arthur, too; continues to look at Arthur like he can't help it, like he can't stop.

Morgana slips out of his arms and backs away, making a more discreet and tactful exit than Arthur would ever have thought her capable of, and then Arthur and Merlin are alone.

***

Arthur is surrounded by light, a still, white light that bears no resemblance to flames. He is older, his face is sculpted and polished, more taut and inscrutable than Merlin remembers it. His eyes hold a lifetime and his mere presence in the room shakes Merlin to the core.

Morgana is energy and a fire all her own, love and fierceness and a deep understanding that Arthur has always underestimated. Magic prickles and crackles along Merlin's veins, raising the hairs on his arms and at the back of his neck. He was nervous to come here, afraid that Arthur would be changed, would not want him despite the letter to Hunith, but Arthur's eyes tell him differently.

When Merlin takes a step forward, Arthur makes a strangled noise and grips Merlin's arm, hard.

"Come," he says, pulling Merlin away, down through the hall, up the curved staircase and along a panelled corridor to what must be his bedroom.

One wall is covered with books, there's a desk by the window and an enormous four-poster with heavy curtains. Merlin notes all these things at the back of his mind, through the whirls and surges of time where Arthur is the only fixed point, the rock that he seizes and holds on to.

Arthur looks at him.

***

Arthur looks at Merlin and doesn't know what to do, what to say; there are too many things jumbled in his head. After all of Arthur's dreams and fantasies, memories and fears, the real Merlin looks so small and frail, so utterly human with the too short hair and those bones protruding at his wrists; the undergrad of Cambridge stepping out of the shimmer of nostalgia to stand here in the winter light with tired eyes. There's a small, white scar on his right cheekbone, sickle-shaped and rough-edged. Arthur touches it with a fingertip.

"What is this?"

"Tiny shell splinter."

The image of Merlin with blood on his face makes anger well up in Arthur. Merlin could have died a thousand times and Arthur would never have known; he could have been left in a mass grave at the front or in that sad, ghostly cemetery at Etaples. Arthur's fingers curl into his palms, nails biting into the skin, and he wants to shout at Merlin for being alive and beautiful. He wants to kiss Merlin for the same reason.

"How long have you been home?" he asks. "A month? Six weeks?"

"Three weeks."

The reply is accompanied by a one-shouldered shrug that incenses Arthur.

"Three weeks." His voice is low and ominous. "Three weeks. And you didn't find it in you to send me a telegram, or write a letter? You didn't have a minute to spare to tell me you were alive and well? You must have known I'd written to your mother to find out, and you didn't have the grace to let me know."

It's the tension and sorrow and fear of months that is transforming itself into anger. He has been so scared for so long; it needs to go somewhere. And he is still afraid, afraid that Merlin has stopped feeling the way they did at Cambridge, afraid that Arthur wants Merlin more than anything in this world while Merlin needs to move on.

His thoughts stop abruptly when Merlin takes Arthur's face in his hands.

"Don't _think_ so much, Arthur," he says softly. "I'm here. I came as soon as I could because I wanted to _see_ you, not send you a letter that couldn't say what I wanted to say anyway, or do what I - what I want to - Arthur, I - "

It becomes clear to Arthur in that moment that he is not alone in what he feels, and Merlin is silenced by Arthur's mouth. His hands slide up the back of Arthur's neck and into his hair to hold him there; Arthur grips Merlin's hips so hard it has to hurt.

"God," Merlin breathes, " _Arthur_ ", and his voice is like heat down Arthur's body.

His skin is so pale against the sheets on Arthur's bed, and Arthur can’t have enough. He wants his mouth everywhere on Merlin and grazes his teeth over a nipple, nuzzles into an armpit, his hands roaming all over. He remembers their first time, in Merlin's rooms at Cambridge, with them so fumbly and incredulous and so turned on, and the last time, rough and desperate in the conviction that it really was the last.

But they're here now, and it's real, and Merlin's tongue is as greedy as it has always been.

At the sight of Arthur's scars Merlin lets out a startled breath, kissing them with a tenderness that almost brings tears to Arthur's eyes. Arthur runs his mouth along Merlin's ribs, so terribly, heartbreakingly visible.

Merlin's skin is salty and sweet and the tip of his cock slick against Arthur's cheek, the back of his knee heavy in Arthur's hand. Arthur presses his nose into the crease of Merlin's thigh and inhales the scent of him, still not quite believing that this is not a dream and he will not wake up to the cracked ceiling of the barracks. Merlin’s fingers knot in his hair, impatient, his hips arching up.

"Come," Merlin pants, "I want you in me."

His back pushes into the curve of Arthur's body as Arthur moves in him, desperately, with his face against Merlin's sweat-damp neck. Merlin is clutching at the bedclothes, incoherent words spilling out of his mouth. When Arthur reaches around and touches his cock he doesn't even try to muffle his shout as he comes. Arthur pushes inside him hard, bites his shoulder and follows.

***

Merlin's body is heavy and sated and he can feel the small, content smile on his lips. Arthur's arm is warm and hard around him, breath damp against the back of his neck, and as long as they can lie like this, listening to their blood sing, Merlin will be happy.

It's not until then that he notices the state of the room. Things are floating around in the air - furniture, books, a vase; the drapes and curtains are billowing softly as if gravity has lost its grip. The tired plant on the side table has burst into a riot of red flowers. _Oh god._ Behind him, Arthur has noticed too, sitting upright.

Merlin makes a noise like a whimper; the desk and chairs thud to the floor, the books slot into place in the bookcase and the curtains sink back into position.

Silence fills the room and Merlin waits. Grey light seeps in from the window and plays over Arthur's hair. _It took an hour,_ Merlin thinks, _to spoil everything. We found our way back and it took me an hour._

Arthur has known about Merlin's magic before, in another life, and he accepted it then because it was of use to him. There is no knowing how he will react to it now.

"Merlin, did you..." Arthur grapples with words and starts again. "Was that you?"

Merlin nods, swallows, preparing himself for questions and accusations, rage perhaps, but it doesn't come.

After a long silence, Arthur asks quietly: "What else can you do?"

 _Small things_ , Merlin thinks, _I must keep to small things_. He takes a breath and blinks. With a soft rush the dying fire flares up in the grate, the window is flung open, the lamps are lit. The desk lifts again to float a few inches above the floor.

The air tastes of winter and burning wood and Arthur's throat works like he is drinking it, swallowing this new reality. _He will have to accept it_ , Merlin thinks half in panic, _he must accept it_. They've been through a war; they've learnt to adjust to all kinds of horror. Surely Arthur will not, _cannot_ regard something as strong and beautiful as magic as an evil thing. After all, it was magic that saved his life, both their lives – if Merlin hadn't had magic, neither of them would be here. Oh, the cruel irony of it; the hopelessness of surviving a war only to face imprisonment.

There's another silence. Then Arthur says: "I see."

Merlin looks away as he lowers the desk to the floor and shuts the window. He leaves the fire burning; they need the heat.

Now Arthur knows. Now he can kick Merlin out of his bed, out of sight, out of his life, and everything will be empty and meaningless.

The silence stretches on and on while Merlin pictures his life without Arthur. He doesn't realise there are tears on his face until he feels Arthur's thumb smooth something away from his cheek.

"Are you scared, Merlin," Arthur says, and his voice is warm.

It's ridiculous that Merlin is scared now when he never was in the trenches – except for the time when that image came to him, the image of Arthur in the burning plane. But in the trenches he could protect himself. Now Arthur has all the power, and if he doesn't want Merlin, there is nothing Merlin can do. Then he could just as well have left himself open to the shells and the gas and died there in the mud with the thousands and thousands of others.

"Yes," he whispers. "Yes, I am."

Arthur's hand touches his face with great gentleness. "Can I ask you something? Or tell you, I'm not sure which."

Merlin gulps, swallowing tears and anxiety. "Of course."

"When my plane was hit," Arthur says slowly, tracing a finger down Merlin's cheek, "when it caught fire and I thought I'd crash, when I thought it was the end for me… then it felt like... I felt... like _you were there_. I can't explain it. I must have been hallucinating - there was something about a creature of fire, a dragon perhaps, and I thought I heard your voice. I thought I could _feel_ you, your presence. Like _you_ were the one taking me back behind the lines. You and that fire creature."

It comes out like a tentative question, and Merlin takes a deep breath. "That's because I was."

Arthur is looking intently at Merlin. "You... _were_? Merlin, I don't understand this yet. You’ll have to tell me, explain to me. What does that mean, that you were there? How could you know…"

"Because I _felt_ you," says Merlin quietly. "I knew you were in danger; I felt your panic. I could always see you, from the moment we met at Cambridge, I could see you like a… a light, a kind of luminous haze, in my mind. If I close my eyes now, I'll still see you, see that glow. And then, back in the trenches, I saw you as clearly as if it was all happening right in front of me – that you were hit, that your plane caught fire, that your gunner was dead, and I knew you'd either burn or crash, or both. I had to do something. But even if I put out the fire you'd still have to land, and I knew you wouldn't make it back behind the lines with the plane as it was. So... I had to help you."

"How?" Arthur looks at him, just looks. "What did you do?"

Merlin swallows hard. "There wasn't much I could do with the fire," he says, "except extinguish it. But something... Arthur, this is going to sound insane, but I'll try to explain later. I'm not sure I understand it all myself at this point, but... my father was a dragonlord, and I knew that I could... I transformed the fire into a dragon, because dragons will heed my command. You weren't delusional. There _was_ a dragon. I commanded it to protect you and take you back behind the lines, back near the airstrip where I knew you'd get help. When I knew you were safe I handed you over. And don't worry, no one else would have seen the dragon; it would only have looked like flames to them."

Arthur opens his mouth to speak but the words don't come, and he lies back against the pillows in silence, looking up at the ceiling as if he'll be able to see an explanation written there. Merlin watches him anxiously, watches as Arthur reaches for his cigarettes, offers Merlin one and lights them both, watches the smoke rise towards the ceiling and disperse.

"How powerful is your magic?" Arthur asks at last. He is still not looking at Merlin.

Merlin shakes his head. "I don't know." He takes a deep breath. "I never thought it amounted to much. I only did small things as a child – lit fires in the grate, moved small objects, summoned things I couldn't find. I stopped the rain once or twice, and Ga- er, someone told me later that it takes quite powerful magic to change the weather. I had some coaching at – well, when I got older, and I began to realise that perhaps my magic does have power. I couldn't do much about the war - it was too huge. But I've never felt my magic as strong as when I saw your plane get hit. Perhaps it's linked to emotion. I think it may be." _And if it is,_ Merlin doesn't say, _then it's not surprising that my magic is at its most powerful when I'm with you, or when you need me._

There is so much that needs explaining, how they have known each other before, how Merlin's magic held so much more power when he was Arthur's court sorcerer, how perhaps it was diminished in this life because Merlin had failed to save his king's life, how it may have changed again now that the balance has been restored... but it will have to wait. One step at a time.

They smoke in silence and Merlin is still waiting for the storm, for Arthur's _reaction_. He has been lied to; Merlin has deceived him ever since they met and there must be a price to pay for that.

Arthur gets out of bed and pulls on a robe. Merlin watches him as he paces the room, pausing by the window where he touches the frame, the ledge, the pane as if examining them for traces of magic. Merlin lies very still, waiting for the verdict.

"God, Merlin," Arthur says at last. His voice is low and sends a renewed shiver down Merlin's spine. He comes back to bed and lies down close, leaning on an elbow, looking down at Merlin's face as Merlin nervously bites his lip.

“This will take some getting used to," Arthur murmurs. He traces a fingertip over Merlin's shoulder and down his arm, making Merlin draw in a ragged breath like it's the first time he's been touched.

"I know I've said this before," Arthur continues softly, his eyes returning to Merlin's, "but it bears repeating: I'm not my father." His hair is gold in the soft light. "I hate it that you've hidden this from me. I hate it that you had to." He takes a breath. "I'd lie if I said I wasn't hurt, but I do understand. I don't hate magic, Merlin; I don't hate _you_. You must never think that I would."

When he reaches out to touch Merlin's face Merlin closes his eyes, his entire world focused for a moment on Arthur's fingertips on his skin. When he opens them again, what he sees makes him gasp.

The flames have returned.

Arthur is surrounded by fire, like he was when Merlin first saw him at university. Back then the fire was hazy and Arthur a shadowed figure, but now Arthur stands out clearly in its midst and there is nothing hazy about the flames – only the tears rising in Merlin's eyes are making them so. He blinks them away impatiently and Arthur is burning, burning clean.

The power of it takes Merlin's breath away. The strong lines of Arthur's face, the curve of his mouth, the blue of his eyes. Merlin remembers thinking that he wanted to be there when the fire burnt clear and clean, and that day has come. Arthur is emerging.

It means something; something to do with the images in the ice sculpture in the woods, with the way Merlin's magic comes alive in Arthur's presence and how the fire around Arthur changes with time and with Merlin’s presence. This is meant to be. _They_ are. Over and over, they are meant to meet and change the world – in small things or on a larger scale; perhaps it does not matter.

He reaches up and pulls Arthur down to him, aware of the significance of this moment, their first kiss when nothing needs to be hidden.

***

"You're aware that some people try to blame the war on the magical community," Arthur says much later, looking at Merlin's sated face.

Merlin snorts. "If magic had been involved," he says, "do they really think we'd have been stuck in the trenches for years?"

Arthur begins to laugh, and they both laugh until they have tears in their eyes at something so profoundly unfunny. Merlin goes quiet and looks at Arthur, reaches up to remove the wetness from the corner of his eye.

"I love you," he says, quietly and earnestly, and Arthur stills, stunned by hearing the words spoken. "I know I never said it before, but god, Arthur, I do. I love you."

And while Arthur's throat works to produce sound, Merlin adds: "Please don't say it back."

Arthur understands, he does - because didn't he think the same thing once?

"I won’t," he promises, catching Merlin's hand and kissing it, kissing the base of the thumb and then the palm. "I'll save it and ambush you with it when you least expect it."

Merlin slides down Arthur's body to lick at his hipbone, making a soft, appreciative noise when Arthur's cock shows interest.

"I didn't think it was possible," Merlin murmurs as his mouth moves to the inside of Arthur's thigh, "but you just made me love you more."

And then they lose their ability to speak at all for quite some time.

***

"I've been thinking," Merlin says when it's already dark and they still haven't left Arthur's bed, "that perhaps your father isn't wrong about you going into politics."

Arthur turns to look at him, frowning. He hasn't thought much of what he will do; all his energy has been consumed by getting well and pushing away the thought that Merlin might be dead. Now that Merlin has miraculously returned to life, to Arthur's bed and to his arms, he will have to consider what to do next.

"Things will have to change," Merlin says, low and urgent, "the world will have to change, and I'm beginning to think that _we_ can change it. Together. For one thing, the ban on magic must be lifted. There ought to be schools for the magically gifted, where they can learn about their magic, learn to use it, control it, direct it, like I did at..." He stops himself.

"At Cambridge," Arthur finishes slowly.

"Yes," Merlin concedes. "At Cambridge."

Arthur closes his eyes, recalling Merlin's reply from many years ago, when Arthur asked him if he had secrets. _You're Arthur Pendragon,_ he had said, simply.

Remembering it now, Arthur stumbles through a chain of thoughts. He is Uther Pendragon's son, and Uther Pendragon is an influential politician with a well-known agenda, known for wanting to punish deviation from what he perceives as the norm. There are two deviations in particular for which he insists on hard labour, where he wants people to be punished for what they _are_ rather than for their actions and choices: homosexuality and magic. The homosexuality had already been kind of a moot point at that stage, when Merlin gave him that reply, which left – magic.

Arthur groans and rubs his eyes. If he had only been a little quicker back then, if his thick head had been a little clearer, he would have realised there and then what Merlin was trying to tell him, _had_ in all effect told him. If he hadn't been so set on having everything spelled out to him in capital letters, he'd have been able to read between the lines and hear what Merlin wasn't saying.

"Perhaps you're right, Merlin," he says. "We should go up to Cambridge and finish our degrees. I want to do something that _matters_ , and I could use your help."

The smile on Merlin's face says yes, _this_ , this is what I want for us.

***

Things are coming together, Merlin thinks. Arthur will find his place in the world, which means that Merlin will, too.

He kisses the shiny, puckered skin on Arthur's shoulder gratefully, strokes his fingertips lightly over it, down Arthur's arm, up the side of his neck to the ear. "I could heal these for you," he says. "I could remove your scars."

Arthur is silent for a moment, watching Merlin thoughtfully. "No," he says at last, "no, I don't think I'd want that." A pause. "I think I'd like to keep them... as a reminder. Not of horror and death, but of... of gratitude, Merlin. A reminder not to take things for granted."

And Merlin can only look at him. Right this minute he loves Arthur so much he doesn't trust himself to speak.

Instead he leans over and kisses Arthur's mouth, feels it yield and open for his tongue, and in his mind his action is parallelled by red wax dripped on a roll of parchment and stamped with the royal signet, the Pendragon crest.

Arthur's pulse is strong and steady under Merlin's fingertips, his hand warm and gentle at the back of Merlin's neck. Merlin closes his eyes and exists only in the moment, in the love and closeness and this kiss that seals the future.

When he pulls back at last, the smile on Arthur's face is radiant like the sun when the year has passed the cusp of midwinter and turned towards spring.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Books that were important for this story, and from which I have borrowed and drawn inspiration:
> 
> E.M. Forster - _Maurice_  
>  K.M. Peyton - _The Edge of the Cloud_  
>  Erich Maria Remarque - _All Quiet on the Western Front_  
>  Ian McEwan - _Atonement_  
>  Evelyn Waugh - _Brideshead Revisited_
> 
> and last but not least,
> 
> Rainer Maria Rilke - _Duino Elegies_ , from which the story quote, the chapter quotes and the title of this story were taken.


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